Since we’re on a bit of an L.A. streak this week, here’s a fun fact:
Southern California’s tremendous petroleum industry accounted for about 20 percent of the world’s output of crude oil during part of the 1920s… in fact, Los Angeles was the world’s leading oil exporting region by 1923, a position it did not relinguish until the Depression decade.
– Nancy Quam-Wickham, “Another World” from Metropolis in the Making
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As a result, many suburbs with names like ‘Gardena’ or ‘Huntington Beach” looked like this:
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She concludes “we should evaluate the concept of suburb to be more inclusive, encompassing many sort of communities … not simply commuter residential districts.”
