Drawing on the accompanying excerpts from Mike Davis's important book on L.A., City of Quartz: Excavating the Future of Los Angeles and referring to Thomas Bender's essay, 'New York as Center of "Difference",' specifically defend or surrender New York's claim to be the representative American city of the twentieth century."]

(Question 2)

"This place doesn't even seem like the United States," observed my Georgetown friend when he saw New York for the first time.

"Where are all the trees, and the grass?" asked another.

Those words, coming from people who has traveled throughout the country extensively, rocked my paradigm. I had always assumed New York was just like the rest of the country, but on a grander scale. But no, I came to realize that New York is nothing like the rest of the country. "Culture and politics in New York are based on premises not quite shared by the dominant American culture."¹⁰ In these ways New York is an anomaly, but an important distinction that affects these other two is infrastructure. New York is unlike the rest of America, but it is better.

Unfortunately, it is the "city" of Los Angeles that more closely represents America. Los Angeles wins the contest between the two cities by default. It isn't more representative of America because of it's own merits, it wins because New York is completely different from America.

Probably the most salient difference between New York and the rest of the country including Los Angeles regards the use of the automobile. While millions of Americans drive Chevy pickups through the prairies and deserts in that make up most of the continent, most New Yorkers don't even have cars at all. The American fascination with the Automobile is legendary. From the gas-guzzling ostentatious creations of the 1950s to the notoriety appropriated to the Mack Truck, Americans simply love their cars. Except for New Yorkers, who see cars as an unnecessary expense and nuisance. Yes, you can have one, but it will be more trouble and money to park it than it is worth, and your insurance will be ridiculous. Nowhere, though, is the dependance on and obsession with automobiles more apparent than in Los Angeles, where nobody walks anywhere, ever.

But the cars are just the tip of the iceberg. They are just a symptom of a much greater malady of Los Angeles: over-consumption of space. People need cars in L.A. because the "city" is so spread out. New York owes it's vertical nature to several factors, historical and geographical. It became a city in an era where transportation was harder to get. Technology between roughly 1650 and 1910 was not conducive to spreading horizontally. Horses and buggies were hard to come by and they were of limited use once obtained. Also, there are rivers that keep New York boxed in on the west, east, and southeast. But L.A. never had these space restrictions. It came into being, by and large, after Henry Ford and other industrial pioneers revolutionized private transportation forever, and there is plenty of land to grab on all sides except to the southwest, where there is ocean. Mike Davis, in his books City of Quartz: Excavating the Future in Los Angeles, paints a horribly dystopic picture of L.A. that just cannot be shaken off: "[F]orty thousand Antelope Valley commuters slither bumper-to-bumper each morning through Soledad Pass on their was to long-distance jobs in the smog-shrouded and overdeveloped San Fernando Valley."¹¹ That is no way to lead a life. In New York, at least people have contact with other human beings if they have to commute to work; and I, for one, would choose the I.R.T. or one of the other forms of public transport that New York has to a metal death-box any day.

The bottom line is that in Los Angeles, and the rest of America, there is tons of space, but in New York there is very little. A simple economic analysis of how much people pay per square foot in New York, especially Manhattan, would illustrate this dichotomy quantitatively.

But the L.A.-style urban sprawl is harmful to the environment, and if it ever were to be seen on a grand scale it would have disastrous effects on the global ecosystem. Davis' example of the Joshua tree is one potent example of how we humans trample over everything in order to create a dream environment (somehow seen as a mass-produced '50s-style suburb!). But is a unique characteristic of New York to concentrate resources in one place. New Yorkers build vertically because they have to, but because of that there are so many people in such a small area that they provide fuel for round-the-clock activity. No city has as bad a case of insomnia as "city that never sleeps." But this too is good for the environment. If New York were to lose this uncanny characteristic for being up 24 hours a day, people would have to build a lot more infrastructure to house all the new workers. It seems like a waste to have the country's great, impressive downtown business districts stand empty for half the day, but in L.A. and throughout the United States, they do. Of course, in New York this is also true, but it is true to a lesser extent. All this contributes to a city that more effectively uses resources than other places.

But beyond simple geographical layout of the cities there are deeper and more alarming differences between L.A. and New York that are worthy of notice. "New York has at least trusted in democracy amidst difference," writes Bender, as other American cities have not.¹² As mentioned in the first essay, New Yorkers are more able to live with difference than other Americans; L.A., with its massive race riots, is most surely included. From a cultural perspective, it seems like the races mix much more in New York than they do in L.A. or any other American city. L.A., though it is surely diverse, lacks the same ethnic milieu that can only be found on the streets of New York. A visitor to west L.A. will be less likely to see a non-white person than someone wandering around any part of New York. Part of the reason for this is the ghettos that exist in L.A., but this too goes back to the spread-out nature of L.A. and its driving culture. Though California is the only state in which minorities make up a majority of the population, if a man downtown does not want to have contact with minority racial groups in L.A. it is no problem. He can get in his car and drive to Santa Monica or another place in the west L.A area. This same man transported to midtown would have to get on the subway to Grand Central, and then get on a commuter train and take it all the way out to Westchester or Connecticut, a much more daunting proposition. Unfortunately, most "doughnut-style" American cities are like Los Angeles in this respect. They have a ring of poorer, largely minority housing surrounded by wealthy, white suburbs -- a formula that provides for little contact between races.

Finally, there is a myth about L.A. that must be debunked. The officials in charge of the L.A. would have us believe that it is the "city" "that brings it all together." Wrong. Falsified. Debunked. New York is literally, physically the city that brings it all together, L.A., instead, spreads it out throughout a wide swath of land.

But there is still hope for the United States, there is one remedy for the dystopia of L.A. As Bender points out in his insightful essay, New York is more accepting of difference than the rest of the country. Perhaps the rest of the country can learn something from New York regarding tolerance. They just have to give up their cars. The country could also learn a thing or two about dealing with the harmful effects from human wastefulness, pollution, and overpopulation by following the lead of New York. They just have to give up their cars. Americans could learn how to build a city again, instead of just creating a sprawling conglomeration of suburbs and calling it a city. They just have to give up their cars.

¹⁰Bender, Thomas. "New York as a Center of 'Difference'." Looking at Our City, Fall 1987. 429.

¹¹Davis, Mike. City of Quartz. 4.

¹²Bender, 432.