The City at Stake: Secession, Reform, and the Battle for Los Angeles

by Raphael J. Sonenshein

The City at Stake tells the dramatic story of how the nation's second-largest city completed a major reform of its government in the face of a deeply threatening movement for secession by the San Fernando Valley. How did Los Angeles, a diverse city with an image of unstructured politics and fragmented government, find a way to unify itself around a controversial set of reforms?


Los Angeles government nearly collapsed in political bickering over charter reform, which generated the remarkable phenomenon of two competing charter reform commissions. Out of this nearly impossible tangle, reformers managed to knit a new city charter that greatly expanded institutions for citizen participation and addressed long-standing weaknesses in the role of the mayor. The new charter, pursued by a Republican mayor, won its greatest support from liberal whites who had long favored reform measures.


Written by an urban scholar who played a key role in the charter reform process, the book offers both a theoretical perspective on the process of institutional reform in an age of diversity, and a firsthand, inside-the-box look at how major reform works.


The new afterword by the author analyzes the 2005 election of Los Angeles's first modern Latino mayor, Antonio Villaraigosa, a milestone in the development of urban reform coalitions in an age of immigration and ethnic diversity.

328 pages, Hardcover

First published July 19, 2004

Reviews

[Josh Fogelson]

So detailed and meticulous, it is very boring to read. But, the whole story of the charter battle is documented, so to some this is a useful book.

[Liam]

"The alienation of white middle-class voters led to a new kind of urban reform. In the era when minority complaints drove the reform agenda, the threat of civil disorder drove municipal reform. Today, it is the threat of exit, tax revolt, or secession." (11)

"African Americans are established and older, and depend to a greater degree on government jobs that do Latinos. They hold political positions they consider imperiled by changing demographics and political demands. Their support of Hahn was founded on familiarity with the Hahn family, but also had an element of defense against an uncertain future. Also Democrats, Latinos are younger and more insurgent. Less dependent on government jobs, they draw their union base from the County Federation of Labor and private employers. The two-headed minority movement both strengthens the Democratic party base in Los Angeles and fractures the progressive movement, reducing the inevitability of a shift to the left." (223)