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Cities of angels
The city without a centre is having an identity crisis. Some of its residents see the solution in secession, reports Duncan Campbell
Wednesday January 23, 2002
While the rest of the US worries about the recession, here in Los Angeles we have the secession to worry about too. Over the last few months, proposals for the Balkanisation of the country's second largest city have been proceeding apace. In November, when the electorate gets to choose a new - or possibly an old - governor, they will also be asked to decide whether they want to see Los Angeles broken up. If all the secessionists get their way, the San Fernando valley, Hollywood and the harbour area - many people in LA do not actually know that there is a harbour - will all become separate cities. This would take 1.7m people away from the population total and 456 sq km (277 sq miles) of land.
Los Angeles is, of course, the city without a centre, the city on wheels, the city without a football team, the city of the future. Jean Baudrillard wrote that LA was 'in love with its limitless horizontality as New York may be with its verticality', and the otherness of the city has been for many people part of its allure.
But since September 11, you often hear people here wondering whether the city would have responded as New York did and where the city's soul lies. There had already been concerns that the city lacked heart.
The celebration of the millennium was, almost literally, a damp squib. The failure of Antonio Villaraigosa, the charismatic young Latino, to win the mayoral election last year by beating the old school candidate Jim Hahn also seemed a step backwards for the city.
While the world has an idea of what a New Yorker is - or indeed a Glaswegian or Parisian - the very word Angeleno often seems to be used self-consciously.
As a result, LA often gets portrayed as a self-indulgent fantasyland, personified in the sneering epithet of 'Tinseltown'. In fact, it is a fabulous city in the true sense of the word, full of unremarked treasures and secrets.
But some residents of the mainly white and fairly conservative suburban San Fernando valley would like to disengage and have even been looking around for a new name for whatever the new city would become; they have been considering some old native American names, which might seem to be just rubbing salt in some very old wounds.
Some Hollywood residents have also thought that they might finally take advantage of the world's most famous sign and go solo. The harbour area is also looking at the idea. In order for the three of them to secede, more than 50% of the whole city and the proposed new city would have to agree.
Los Angeles has had other things to think about over the last few months but finally people are starting to get worried. This week the LA Times issued a 'wake up' call to the electorate. Mayor Jim Hahn is also turning his attention to a campaign to dissuade the disgruntled valley voters and others from breaking away. Time to save that limitless horizontality.
(From the Guardian, UK)
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