The situation in Los Angeles, as with Detroit, is that both cities were, in part, debilitated by the popularization of the automobile. The automobile afforded people, even the moderately poor, the opportunity to commute to work, and thus, encouraged increasing movement away from urban areas. Kunstler proposes that Los Angles became the “prototypical autmobile city” (212). The automobile and the freeway, backed by government subsidies, encouraged what might be referred to as “urban sprawl.” Unfortunately, as Kunstler suggests, this has had its ramifications: “Now the results of this grand experiment are in, and the news is not good: the metropolis is strangling on its own patented brand of ‘growth’” (212). These ramifications include pollution, community separation, and declining populations in the urban core. The latter ramification is of particular interest.
There is a certain irony that arises in relationship to political statements made during the Reagan administration. It is widely documented that the president responded to welfare issues by associating the problem with “welfare queens” driving “welfare cadillacs.” These explicitly racist comments were directed at inner city non-Anglo populations. This is where the greater irony emerges. Those same cadillacs, which welfare recipients were supposedly driving, were responsible, in large part, for the the decimation of the inner city; for its abandonment.
