{"id":2390444,"date":"2025-01-15T08:31:59","date_gmt":"2025-01-15T13:31:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/los-angeles-isnt-uniquely-dangerous-its-uniquely-mismanaged\/"},"modified":"2025-01-15T08:36:15","modified_gmt":"2025-01-15T13:36:15","slug":"los-angeles-isnt-uniquely-dangerous-its-uniquely-mismanaged","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/los-angeles-isnt-uniquely-dangerous-its-uniquely-mismanaged\/","title":{"rendered":"Los Angeles Isn&#8217;t Uniquely Dangerous, It&#8217;s Uniquely Mismanaged"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"float:left\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">16<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Flos-angeles-isnt-uniquely-dangerous-its-uniquely-mismanaged%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=2390444&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><p>In a recent article for The Free \u2064Press, Leighton Woodhouse critically engages with Mike Davis&#8217;s perspective on the\u200b environmental challenges facing Los Angeles, especially in light of the fires affecting the region. \u200dDrawing from Davis&#8217;s book &#8220;Ecology of Fear,&#8221; Woodhouse \u2064reflects\u2063 on\u2063 Davis&#8217;s argument that certain \u2063areas of Southern\u2062 california,like Malibu and the Pacific Palisades,were never suitable for advancement due to their inherent risks. The article discusses the dichotomy of life in these wealthy\u200d but perilous locations, filled with both natural beauty and danger, including wildlife\u2064 threats.<\/p>\n<p>Woodhouse also critiques Davis \u2064as a controversial figure in \u200durban studies, highlighting the inconsistency and inaccuracies \u200bin his work as reported by the Los Angeles \u200cTimes.\u200b While Davis\u2063 portrayed Los Angeles\u2064 as an &#8216;apocalypse theme park&#8217; fraught with calamity, Woodhouse suggests that the reality \u2062for many residents is more about comfort than \u200bconstant danger. He \u2063acknowledges \u200dthe prevailing risks \u200cof living in los Angeles\u2014like fires and earthquakes\u2014but argues that the overwhelming majority of days in \u2062this habitat are quite pleasant.<\/p>\n<p>Ultimately, the piece emphasizes \u2063the complex relationship between risk and comfort\u2064 in Los Angeles\u2064 and challenges readers to reconsider the narratives surrounding life in this unique urban landscape.  <\/p>\n<p class=\"readmore\">\n    <button onclick=\"showReadMore()\" id=\"readmorebtn\">Read more&#8230;<\/button>\n<\/p>\n<hr id=\"line\">\n<span id=\"more\"><\/p>\n<div>\n<p>In his&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/substack.com\/redirect\/ab0ab113-7963-41cd-b9f1-c6413df0c853?j=eyJ1IjoiazY0aTEifQ.satm_hK_k8vRSDWSBIE8CVwg4ptQQeonCGvCDHbjQxs\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">much-discussed piece on the Los Angeles fires<\/a>&nbsp;at The Free Press, Leighton Woodhouse looks to Mike Davis for a narrative foundation. In his&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/substack.com\/redirect\/5ef89569-bb4d-4d5e-92ac-1ee7eb856339?j=eyJ1IjoiazY0aTEifQ.satm_hK_k8vRSDWSBIE8CVwg4ptQQeonCGvCDHbjQxs\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">book<\/a>&nbsp;<em>Ecology of Fear<\/em>, Woodhouse notes, Davis &ldquo;argued that the area between the beach and the Santa Monica Mountains simply never should have been developed. No matter what measures we take to prevent it, those hills are going to burn, and the houses we erect upon them are only so much kindling.&rdquo; Malibu and the Palisades, the land of hard living. That&rsquo;s why so many rich and famous people&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/substack.com\/redirect\/a1980c62-aad8-4a7d-85e0-d7011c20c602?j=eyJ1IjoiazY0aTEifQ.satm_hK_k8vRSDWSBIE8CVwg4ptQQeonCGvCDHbjQxs\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">lived there<\/a>: because it was so inherently miserable and dangerous.<\/p>\n<p>Mike Davis was full of sh-t for 30 years &mdash; he died in 2022 &mdash; and I&rsquo;ve been rolling my eyes at him throughout. He described Los Angeles as an &ldquo;apocalypse theme park,&rdquo; a place of ruin and pain, populated by hardened survivors who, &ldquo;dutifully struggling,&rdquo; stagger on through the &ldquo;Job-like ordeal&rdquo; of clinging to a brutal landscape.<\/p>\n<figure><\/figure>\n<p>Also, Sierra Madre has bears. The Los Angeles suburbs are a place of horror and agony, because they back into the mountains, where blood-clawed wild animals prowl and stalk and slaughter. Places where life is especially grim and sanguinary, pgs. 240-41: Bradbury, La Crescenta, Glendora, the areas around the hellscape of Santa Barbara. A poodle was eaten by a mountain lion in Bradbury once, as neighbors gaped in open-jawed terror, YET STILL DO FOOLS ENDURE THE HORROR OF LIVING IN SUCH A PLACE.<\/p>\n<p>Here are current&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/substack.com\/redirect\/1a4fedf3-5a33-4fed-9a6b-d50f7c51c39e?j=eyJ1IjoiazY0aTEifQ.satm_hK_k8vRSDWSBIE8CVwg4ptQQeonCGvCDHbjQxs\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">real estate listings<\/a>&nbsp;in Bradbury, a <a href=\"https:\/\/amzn.to\/3YuVZYV\">gated hillside community incorporated<\/a> as an independent city in the San Gabriel Valley with a population of about 900 people:<\/p>\n<figure><\/figure>\n<p><em>How then would ye endure such horror<\/em>, oh pilgrim, to live thus amid such blood and death? How bearest thou brutal existence upon this land?<\/p>\n<p>Famously, in 1999, the&nbsp;Los Angeles Times, which used to be a newspaper, ran a&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/substack.com\/redirect\/0d100b97-454b-4ba7-a1a9-80e0303e7870?j=eyJ1IjoiazY0aTEifQ.satm_hK_k8vRSDWSBIE8CVwg4ptQQeonCGvCDHbjQxs\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">long story<\/a>&nbsp;examining Mike Davis and his vision of Southern California. It&rsquo;s full of sentences like this:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>&ldquo;Los Angeles&rsquo; most provocative social critic has stretched, bent and broken more than a few facts in &lsquo;Ecology of Fear,&rsquo; his latest, darkly themed work on the urban area he claims to love.&rdquo;<\/li>\n<li>&ldquo;&hellip;more than a third of the time there were factual problems with his work.&rdquo;<\/li>\n<li>&ldquo;Davis concedes the error.&rdquo;<\/li>\n<li>&ldquo;Davis does not say where he got this piece of information.&rdquo;<\/li>\n<li>&ldquo;&lsquo;I honestly don&rsquo;t know what I&rsquo;m referring to,&rsquo; Davis said.&rdquo;<\/li>\n<li>&ldquo;Some of Davis&rsquo; mistakes involve mergers of fact and fiction, including making up a quote.&rdquo;<\/li>\n<li>&ldquo;Davis attributes the false quote to a mix-up.&rdquo;<\/li>\n<li>&ldquo;Then he takes readers on a partial flight of fantasy&hellip;&rdquo;<\/li>\n<li>&ldquo;An examination of the Malibu Times article shows that Davis made up the parts about the jewels, the hair color, the kayakers&rsquo; occupations, the evidence of their callous classism and the ethnicity of their maids.&rdquo;<\/li>\n<li>&ldquo;Davis is mischievously unrepentant.&rdquo;<\/li>\n<li>&ldquo;Davis also merges fact and literary fiction, without acknowledgment, while arguing that Pomona, like other older, outer suburbs, is dying.&rdquo;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>And so on.<\/p>\n<p>The&nbsp;Times&nbsp;concluded that Davis could be read as &ldquo;a polemicist, who makes cogent, incisive arguments on big themes,&rdquo; but not as &ldquo;a historian who is expected to be reliable, even on details.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p>Los Angeles has disasters, yes. It burns, and we have earthquakes. Coyotes will eat your cats. Bears will soak in your hot tub.<\/p>\n<figure>\n<p><span><\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"California Bear Gets Hot Tub Treat\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/8fw9T4-M8TU?feature=oembed&amp;enablejsapi=1\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><\/span> <\/p>\n<\/figure>\n<p>But&nbsp;<em>ease<\/em>&nbsp;is the actual point of the place, an argument Davis advanced while he made up a bunch of dumb sh-t about the agony and the horror. Comfort is our rock. Yes, people start wearing parkas and gloves and wool hats when the temperature plummets into the 50s. The current weather is a bit colder than we&rsquo;re used to for early January, but we&rsquo;re enduring.<\/p>\n<div>\n<figure><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<p>If you live in Los Angeles for 30 years &mdash; about 10,957 days, depending on how many leap years you get in &mdash; you&rsquo;re going to have about 10,950 days that are extremely comfortable and a few days when you&rsquo;re on the roof with a garden hose, watching the embers, or surfing the shifting foundation of your house as the tectonic plates grind. <\/p>\n<p>My wife had a New York childhood and says that&nbsp;<em>hell no<\/em>&nbsp;she&rsquo;s not going to ever again live where it snows; she moved to Los Angeles after college FOR A REASON, thank you very much. We&rsquo;ve all lived here in this place of absurd comfort that goes wrong every few years because we&nbsp;<em>manage the modest risks<\/em>&nbsp;&mdash; by crazy expedients like having good fire departments and clearing the flammable brush, strategies that left the rails at some undiscussed point.<\/p>\n<p>The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power recently tried to replace flammable creosote-coated wooden poles for powerlines in the area that&rsquo;s now burning in the Palisades fire, putting in fire-resistant steel poles in their place, but <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/bidens-infrastructure-plan-could-boost-pelosis-investment-portfolio\/\" title=\"Biden\u2019s Infrastructure Plan Could Boost Pelosi\u2019s Investment Portfolio\">environmental activists&#038;nbsp<\/a>;<a href=\"https:\/\/substack.com\/redirect\/bbb4c7ec-9635-478a-af30-5d24bd68eb7e?j=eyJ1IjoiazY0aTEifQ.satm_hK_k8vRSDWSBIE8CVwg4ptQQeonCGvCDHbjQxs\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" target=\"_blank\">stopped the work<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>The Los Angeles Fire Department laid off mechanics to save the city money for social justice programs and so has an enormous portion of its fleet&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/substack.com\/redirect\/16fca935-33cb-4567-b71b-91a74b4afab4?j=eyJ1IjoiazY0aTEifQ.satm_hK_k8vRSDWSBIE8CVwg4ptQQeonCGvCDHbjQxs\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">sitting unusable in a city repair yard<\/a>, untouched.&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/substack.com\/redirect\/00e56e82-dd06-4207-9187-cb1338e12028?j=eyJ1IjoiazY0aTEifQ.satm_hK_k8vRSDWSBIE8CVwg4ptQQeonCGvCDHbjQxs\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">We knew this<\/a> before the fires:<\/p>\n<figure>\n<p><span><\/p>\n<blockquote data-width=\"500\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<div lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">\n<p>Los Angeles Fire Department chief Kristin Crowley lists amount of out of service LA Fire Department equipment:<\/p>\n<p>&ndash; 40 fire engines<br \/>&ndash; 36 rescue ambulances<br \/>&ndash; 10 of our trucks also out of service<br \/>&ndash; Close to 15%-20% of our fleet<\/p>\n<p>How could Gavin Newsom and Karen Bass let this happen? <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/fm4bTgMTjz\">pic.twitter.com\/fm4bTgMTjz<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>&mdash; Wall Street Apes (@WallStreetApes) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/WallStreetApes\/status\/1878862411031351524?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">January 13, 2025<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><\/span> <\/p>\n<\/figure>\n<ol>\n<li>Forty fire engines out of service as the city burns;<\/li>\n<li>Ohhh, the&nbsp;<em>landscape<\/em>&nbsp;of ruin!<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>The point to make about the landscape isn&rsquo;t that it&rsquo;s inherently likely to burn; the point to make is that we stopped preparing for that likelihood, slipping into the ease of the place on a raft made of luxury beliefs.<\/p>\n<p>I know the places that have burned. I&rsquo;ve walked and driven the streets that are gone. I&rsquo;ve watched the burning foundations of a building I used to live in, restaurants we visited, stores we shopped in. My favorite memory of Pacific Palisades, a sort of small town that lived as an island of comfort in a declining city, Mayberry RFD for the well-to-do, was the time I stood behind a middle-aged woman at Noah&rsquo;s Bagels who was interrogating the staff about each bagel, at great length, as the line spooled out behind her: &ldquo;Now, tell me about the&nbsp;<em>blueberry<\/em>&nbsp;bagel&hellip;.&rdquo; She wanted a deep dive on ingredients, grams of carbohydrates, grams of protein, sugar content, baking&nbsp;<em>technique<\/em>. The staff pulled out a binder to&nbsp;<em>consult<\/em>&nbsp;on the matter. I eventually gave up and looked for breakfast somewhere else on the block. It&rsquo;s the place where extremely comfortable people pursue what they want, oblivious to surroundings. <\/p>\n<p>This is the kernel Mike Davis got right, and it&rsquo;s the reason the place has failed.&nbsp;<em>Everywhere<\/em>&nbsp;burns or shakes or freezes or blows down. The susceptibility to natural disasters isn&rsquo;t the least bit a distinctive feature of Los Angeles &mdash; zero, nada, none, not at all. It&rsquo;s the universal human condition, mitigated by action. Or not mitigated by action.<\/p>\n<p>The <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/lebron-james-quits-social-media-due-to-negativity-after-his-attack-on-trump-supporters-failed-to-help-kamala-harris-win\/\" title=\"LeBron James Quits Social Media Due to &#039;Negativity&#039; After His Attack on Trump Supporters Failed to Help Kamala Harris Win\">fault isn&#038;rsquo<\/a>;t in the land. Don&rsquo;t look for it there.<\/p>\n<p><em>This <a href=\"https:\/\/chrisbray.substack.com\/p\/los-angeles-a-place-and-a-story?publication_id=484195&amp;post_id=154846872&amp;isFreemail=true&amp;r=k64i1&amp;triedRedirect=true\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">article<\/a> was originally published on the author&rsquo;s Substack, &ldquo;<a href=\"https:\/\/chrisbray.substack.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Tell Me How This Ends<\/a>.&rdquo;<\/em><\/p>\n<hr>\n<p>      Chris Bray is a former infantry sergeant in the U.S. Army, and has a history PhD from the University of California Los Angeles. He is the author of &#8220;Court-Martial: How Military Justice Has Shaped America from the Revolution to 9\/11 and Beyond,&#8221; published last year by W.W. Norton.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Leighton Woodhouse&#8217;s piece on LA fires cites Mike Davis&#8217; views<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2086,"featured_media":2390445,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/Palisades-Fire-1280x854.jpg.webp","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[546],"tags":[48533,36585,21619,38835,41720],"class_list":["post-2390444","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-federalist","tag-city-planning","tag-los-angeles","tag-mismanagement","tag-public-policy","tag-urban-safety"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/Palisades-Fire-1280x854.jpg.webp","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2390444","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2086"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2390444"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2390444\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2390448,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2390444\/revisions\/2390448"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2390445"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2390444"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2390444"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2390444"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}