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City of Industry: Genealogies of Power in Southern California
Founded in 1957, the Southern California suburb prophetically named City of Industry today represents, in the words of Victor Valle, "The gritty crossroads of the global trade revolution that is transforming Southern California factories into warehouses, and adjacent working class communities into economic and environmental sacrifice zones choking on cheap goods and carcinogenic diesel exhaust."City of Industry is a stunning exposé on the construction of corporate capitalist spaces.Valle investigated an untapped archive of Industry's built landscape, media coverage, and public records, including sealed FBI reports, to uncover a cascading series of scandals. A kaleidoscopic view of the corruption that resulted when local land owners, media barons, and railroads converged to build the city, this suspenseful narrative explores how new governmental technologies and engineering feats propelled the rationality of privatization using their property-owning servants as tools.
Valle's tale of corporate greed begins with the city's founder James M. Stafford and ends with present day corporate heir, Edward Roski Jr., the nation's biggest industrial developerùco-owner of the L.A. Staples Arena and possible future owner of California's next NFL franchise. Not to be forgotten in Valle's captivating story are Latino working class communities living within Los Angeles's distribution corridors, who suffer wealth disparities and exposure to air pollution as a result of diesel-burning trucks, trains, and container ships that bring global trade to their very doorsteps. They are among the many victims of City of Industry.
Valle's tale of corporate greed begins with the city's founder James M. Stafford and ends with present day corporate heir, Edward Roski Jr., the nation's biggest industrial developerùco-owner of the L.A. Staples Arena and possible future owner of California's next NFL franchise. Not to be forgotten in Valle's captivating story are Latino working class communities living within Los Angeles's distribution corridors, who suffer wealth disparities and exposure to air pollution as a result of diesel-burning trucks, trains, and container ships that bring global trade to their very doorsteps. They are among the many victims of City of Industry.
336 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2009
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March 24, 2012Popular histories are wretched, vulgar things--long-form Wikipedia filtered through an egoist interpretation of reality. Victor Valle is aware of this, but proceeds to write something that is fundamentally a popular history anyway.
I appreciate his attempts to "de-popularize" the subject, and that even today material is difficult to dredge up on the subject [via the walls of secrecy provided by privately-held legal entities], but he begins every chapter with a quotation, and one of them was his own poetry, and another was someone misquoting Brecht. Ergo I'm afraid I must throw the book at this.
I appreciate his attempts to "de-popularize" the subject, and that even today material is difficult to dredge up on the subject [via the walls of secrecy provided by privately-held legal entities], but he begins every chapter with a quotation, and one of them was his own poetry, and another was someone misquoting Brecht. Ergo I'm afraid I must throw the book at this.
July 18, 2018
it's hard to not compare this to City of Quartz, but that comparison is easy and all wrung out. having grown up next door to City of Industry this hit home pretty literally. while not so engaging from start to finish, i'm trying to not judge it w/r/t that since this is more or less an extended investigation of power, greed, and civic manipulation. the meat is in the details, not the prose.
the two most interesting points made pretty early on (i think a version of this that distilled those points would probably be more universally appealing/popular than the detail-laden thing that is this book) are: 1. describing the systematic manipulation of local government/culture as "technologies". i've never read about this, but it occurs throughout the book and to me lends an interesting flavor to thinking of governments as machines.
2. (this is the real interesting one for me) considering the idea that a toxic environment breeds the kind of villain best suited to take advantage of it more so than any individual has the foresight/capacity to be a mastermind behind rampant corruption of a system/city/government. again, maybe this is obvious, but the way Victor Valle sets up the scene to introduce this idea gave me chills.
this is a good one, and as far as i know, one of the only lengthy works about my area of the eastern san gabriel valley, so in that sense i feel that at least part of it should be required reading for everyone who grew up here, as a way to better understand why our cities look and feel the way they do, and how that affects our lives individually, for better or worse (usually for worse let's not kid ourselves).
the two most interesting points made pretty early on (i think a version of this that distilled those points would probably be more universally appealing/popular than the detail-laden thing that is this book) are: 1. describing the systematic manipulation of local government/culture as "technologies". i've never read about this, but it occurs throughout the book and to me lends an interesting flavor to thinking of governments as machines.
2. (this is the real interesting one for me) considering the idea that a toxic environment breeds the kind of villain best suited to take advantage of it more so than any individual has the foresight/capacity to be a mastermind behind rampant corruption of a system/city/government. again, maybe this is obvious, but the way Victor Valle sets up the scene to introduce this idea gave me chills.
this is a good one, and as far as i know, one of the only lengthy works about my area of the eastern san gabriel valley, so in that sense i feel that at least part of it should be required reading for everyone who grew up here, as a way to better understand why our cities look and feel the way they do, and how that affects our lives individually, for better or worse (usually for worse let's not kid ourselves).
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews