Renewing the Dream: The Mobility Revolution and the Future of Los Angeles

California, once the epitome of car culture, is again on the front lines of the American mobility revolution, and I’m thrilled to have contributed a chapter to the extraordinary new book Renewing the Dream: The Mobility Revolution and the Future of Los Angeles, edited by my friend James Sanders and published by Rizzoli on September 19.

He invited me to join a murderer’s row of contributors including UCLA’s Donald Shoup, Michael Manville, and Eric Avila, along with Woods Bagot CEO Nik Karalis, policy expert Mark Valliantos, and the renowned architecture- and design critic Frances Anderton. Description below; preorder here!

Drawing together original research, design studies, and cultural essays, Renewing the Dream offers the first comprehensive look at the changes remaking the mobility landscape of Southern California—and the opportunities to reappropriate vast tracts of the city for new uses. Edited by James Sanders and produced with the global architecture studio Woods Bagot, this book explores the forces propelling this shift as well as its controversial impact on Los Angeles, as a city once famed for its car-oriented, low-rise landscape is transformed into a more diverse, more dense, more complex place.

This many-sided portrait offers essays by a distinguished group of writers, designs for the city’s future, and studies of how the new mobility might allow areas now dedicated to parking and gas stations to be reimagined. Rounding out its portrait are historic photographs, maps, Hollywood images, and the artwork of David Hockney, Catherine Opie, Ed Ruscha, Wayne Thiebaud, Carlos Almaraz, and stills from La La Land to Chinatown. The book is a thought piece on the future of American cities, with lessons that will carry resonance all around the globe.