The crisis of leftist urban theory in postmodernism : the case of the L.A. 'School'

Abstract

This thesis is an exploration into the methodology of a particular group of urbanists based in Los Angeles who call themselves the 'LA School'. It understands their varied approaches as the product of an epistemological history stretching from the mid- nineteenth century through the advent of post-structuralism and postmodernism into the present. It is not an attempt to portray the whole history of social theory in this period but instead it is an investigation into the ways a particular group of leftist scholars approach a city having selected from this heritage particular methods of explanation. In particular it is focused on postmodernism as a significant disruption in Marxist theory of the city. The 'LA School' represents one response to this epistemological crisis in its adoption of particular methodological tools, namely a critical spatial materialism. This adoption speaks to the responsibility of leftist urban theorists to know the city if they are to help it. As the LA School is principally a school of theory, not practice, I understand its greatest contribution to lay in outlining contemporary leftist methods of explanation.