Urban Politics and the Los Angeles School of Urbanism

Abstract

This polemical article uses Los Angeles as a template to challenge existing theoretical and empirical research traditions in the study of urban politics. The precepts of the “Los Angeles School” exemplify the shift from a modernist to a postmodern urbanism in which altered geographies are redefining the meaning and practice of urban politics. Los Angeles challenges an urban political scholarship that is overly focused on empirical analysis at the expense of theory, too constrained by conventional categories, and divorced from adjacent disciplines with much to contribute to the understanding of contemporary politics, including urban political economy.