Abstract
It’s a cliché to say that Los Angeles is the world’s biggest suburb without a city. As my plane broke through the clouds on a rare rainy autumn day in southern California, miles upon miles of single-family homes stretched along ramrod straight roads far into the mist. Houses, houses, houses, strip mall. Houses, houses, houses, gas station, shopping mall. But where’s the city? The claustrophobic scene was a shock after the long flight over the empty brown Southwest United States, where canyons, mountains, and thin desert streams revealed little evidence of human activity from west Texas until the California coastal mountains. Some travelers may dream of sipping a drink on a Caribbean cruise or driving through rolling hills with the radio blasting; as for me, give me a plane trip across the Southwest with a window seat and the sun warming my face.
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© 2011 Paul Boudreaux
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Boudreaux, P. (2011). Filling in the World’s Biggest Suburb: Los Angeles. In: The Housing Bias. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230119857_6
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