The Global Cities by Robert Gottlieb & Simon Ng

Author:Robert Gottlieb & Simon Ng
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: global connection; environmential issues; development pattern; air pollution; water quality, supply; transportation; food; traffic; policy; change; Pearl River Delta; Ports and Goods Movement; Air Quality; Open Space; Public Space; Food; Water Quality; LA; HK
Publisher: The MIT Press
Published: 2017-06-16T04:00:00+00:00

Los Angeles

Before Hong Kong’s MTR system had been built and before Los Angeles had become auto-dependent, LA had had the most expansive rail and streetcar system in the United States. And even as the rail lines began to cross multiple jurisdictions at the turn of the twentieth century, the bicycle had achieved popularity and prominence. The sequence of transportation systems—from bike to rail and then to car—helped lay the groundwork for the next system that replaced it, undermining or at least narrowing the options of each system displaced.

During the 1890s, the bicycle was widely used for both recreation and transport in Los Angeles, due to the city’s mild year-round weather and largely flat land. In contrast to the horse-drawn carriages that led to manure in the streets, the bicycle was recognized as a modern, clean, and efficient way to transport individuals from place to place. Bicycles helped establish the first paved roadways and provided the first transportation system widely used by women. Forty years before the first freeway was built, an elevated cycleway was proposed and partially built to connect an eight-mile stretch of Pasadena to downtown Los Angeles—the very same route that the first freeway in Los Angeles would follow forty years later.21

While Los Angeles during the 1890s was considered the bicycle capital of the United States, the bicycle had already begun to be eclipsed by the extensive rail systems that were being built. The major railroad companies—the Union Pacific, Southern Pacific, and Santa Fe, among others—quickly established themselves as the most powerful players in the development of Los Angeles. They negotiated the terms of whether and how the city would grow, including its ability to be connected to other parts of California and the rest of the country. In exchange, they received huge land holdings, often as a condition for laying the tracks to connect the city.

The railroad magnates, led by the ambitious Henry E. Huntington, became a powerful force within the city and the region through construction of a vast electric railway system. This included Huntington’s Pacific Electric Railway’s “interurbans,” named for their larger size and faster speed than rail lines operating just within the city limits. Railroad magnates like Huntington sought to influence and control every aspect of urban development—from the location of the harbor to the new subdivisions that sprang up at the edges of the central part of the city. Although not always successful in achieving their goal—the harbor battle in the 1890s represented one of the few losses—they were most successful when they were able to control or make common cause with parallel interests, such as the electric utilities and the real estate syndicates organized in the first decade of the twentieth century.22

The story has often been told about how Los Angeles extended outward thanks to the land speculators and syndicates that subdivided undeveloped or agricultural land for new urban subdivisions. The electric railway was central to that process, often taking the lead along with the electric utility to establish a new town plat, also made possible with the availability of imported water.

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