Trouble in the Infrastructural State

 

Remember Christopher Hawthorne’s bizarrely off-kilter review of the Infrastructural City in the LA Times? Hawthorne thought we missed the mark when we suggested that a rabidly self-centered politics— coupled with massive levels of complexity and skyrocketing costs—ended the era of big infrastructure in Los Angeles, leaving in its wake a dysfunctional ecosystem of jury-rigged, often-privatized infrastructures. Instead, Hawthorne took Obama at his word when he thought he would build a new WPA and pined for OMA-designed windmills of the coast of Catalina Island. But that’s the difference between many journalists and academic researchers: the former have to sell stories, the latter have to draw verifiable conclusions.
 
By now its clear that there will be no new WPA-style initiative under Obama. There will be no new Herzog and de Meuron nuclear plants rising in the Mojave, no new Zaha Hadid sewage plants in Malibu. So now its time to take stock of where Los Angeles and California are really heading and the future seems grim.  
 
Take a look at  "The Ungovernable State," a chilling account of California politics in the Economist. California is collapsing due to the very same sort of politics that we identified in the Infrastructural City. Los Angeles, and the infrastructural state of California are exacerbated conditions of neoliberal government, virtually incapacitated by the local interests, individualism, and extremism that rules politics today. 
 
It’s a different end-game from the one that Mike Davis identified in the City of Quartz: things aren’t ending with a racial bang bang but with a political stalemate, but its a bad end nonetheless. What should concern us is that if California is an exacerbated condition, its still a model for neoliberal government: New York, for example, is close behind. This was the real lesson of the Infrastructural City. Only facing up to that reality, not pining for windmills or a new WPA, is going to help.   

 

Remember Christopher Hawthorne’s bizarrely off-kilter review of the Infrastructural City in the LA Times? Hawthorne thought we missed the mark when we suggested that a rabidly self-centered politics— coupled with massive levels of complexity and skyrocketing costs—ended the era of big infrastructure in Los Angeles, leaving in its wake a dysfunctional ecosystem of jury-rigged, often-privatized infrastructures. Instead, Hawthorne took Obama at his word when he thought he would build a new WPA and pined for OMA-designed windmills of the coast of Catalina Island. But that’s the difference between many journalists and academic researchers: the former have to sell stories, the latter have to draw verifiable conclusions.
 
By now its clear that there will be no new WPA-style initiative under Obama. There will be no new Herzog and de Meuron nuclear plants rising in the Mojave, no new Zaha Hadid sewage plants in Malibu. So now its time to take stock of where Los Angeles and California are really heading and the future seems grim.  
 
Take a look at  "The Ungovernable State," a chilling account of California politics in the Economist. California is collapsing due to the very same sort of politics that we identified in the Infrastructural City. Los Angeles, and the infrastructural state of California are exacerbated conditions of neoliberal government, virtually incapacitated by the local interests, individualism, and extremism that rules politics today. 
 
It’s a different end-game from the one that Mike Davis identified in the City of Quartz: things aren’t ending with a racial bang bang but with a political stalemate, but its a bad end nonetheless. What should concern us is that if California is an exacerbated condition, its still a model for neoliberal government: New York, for example, is close behind. This was the real lesson of the Infrastructural City. Only facing up to that reality, not pining for windmills or a new WPA, is going to help.   

1 thought on “Trouble in the Infrastructural State”

  1. California- The Ungovernable State, or Four New States?
    Now that the ballot measures have failed, it is more clear than ever that California needs a constitutional convention to reinvent itself. While many saw the failure of the budget measures as the public rejecting new taxes, I think it was more a rejection of a failed way of doing business.

    This article on a four-state solution for California is interesting because it helps put the problem of governing the state into perspective. It really isn’t one state with common needs or solutions but four states that might be able to govern themselves individually (but I doubt it).

    The Governor’s recent suggestion that California sell off valuable real estate to private interests (i.e. the LA Coliseum, San Quentin Prison etc.) to close this year’s budget gap thoroughly reinforced your point about privatized infrastructures. I fear for the future of my state.

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