Abandoned amusement park: Prypiat, Ukraine.

Prypiat is an abandoned city in the Zone of alienation in northern Ukraine. It was home to the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant workers, abandoned in 1986 following the Chernobyl disaster. Its population had been around 50,000 prior to the accident.

- Oddee.com: Link to full set of photos.

Via Armchair Generalist.

Observations by Morrow Mayo on the city of Los Angeles

Los Angeles, it should be understood, is not a mere city. On the
contrary, it is, and has been since 1888, a commodity; something to be
advertised and sold to the people of the United States like
automobiles, cigarettes and mouth wash.

- Morrow Mayo: Link.

And:

Here is an artificial city which has been pumped up under forced
draught, inflated like a balloon, stuffed with rural humanity like a
goose with corn…endeavoring to eat up this too rapid avalanche of
anthropoids, the sunshine metropolis heaves and strains, sweats and
becomes pop-eyed, like a young boa constrictor trying to swallow a
goat. It has never imparted an urban character to its incoming
population for the simple reason that it has never had any character to
impart. On the other hand, the place has the manners, culture and
general outlook of a huge country village.

- Morrow Mayo: Link.

Los Angeles by Morrow Mayo @ Amazon.com: link.

1933 Gonzo History

In his prescient 1933 gonzo history, Los Angeles, Morrow Mayo traced L.A.’s birth back to cleared sagebrush and wild mustard, a barren swatch of acreage “that resembled a sort of glorified unoccupied tennis-court in the desert, surrounded by empty polo-fields.”

- Josh Kun, “L.A. Boogie”: Link.

The Owens Valley Aqueduct

In W. A. Chalfant’s book, The Story of Inyo, Morrow Mayo (a Los Angeles reporter) wrote: “Los Angeles gets its water by reason of one of the costliest, crookedest, most unscrupulous deals ever perpetrated, plus one of the greatest pieces of engineering folly ever heard of. Owens Valley is there for anybody to see. The city of Los Angeles moved through this valley like a devastating plague. It was ruthless, stupid, cruel and crooked. It stole the waters of the Owens River. It drove the people of Owens Valley from their home, a home which they had built from the desert. For no sound reason, for no sane reason, it destroyed a helpless agricultural section and a dozen towns. It was an obscene enterprise from the beginning to end.”

- Owens Valley Herald: link.

See also California water wars.

Morrow Mayo’s influence on others

When asked to name the writer on Southern California who had the greatest
influence in shaping my values, I pass over the more prominent names: John
Caughey, Carey McWilliams, Kevin Starr and others. I grew up in the pre-WWII
Southland, and my literary hero was the latter-day muckraker, Morrow Mayo. I
was thirteen when I read his powerful environmental essay, “To See it Fall,” a
now forgotten plea for preservation of the giant Sequoias. Shortly after that
I read his critical volume “Los Angeles,” and I became forever a critic of the
city’s destruction of Owens Valley.

- Ralph E. Shaffen, An Open Letter to “Environmentalist” Mary Nichols and Times Publisher Jeffrey Johnson: link.

“Global Cities looks at the changing faces of ten dynamic international cities: Cairo, Istanbul, Johannesburg, London, Los Angeles, Mexico City, Mumbai, São Paulo, Shanghai and Tokyo.”

Saõ Paulo: an apartment building for the wealthy overlooks a favela, ironically called Paraisópolis (Paradise city). Photo: Luiz Arthur Leirão Vieira

Exploring each city through five thematic lenses – speed, size, density, diversity and form – the exhibition draws on data originally assembled for the 10th International Architecture Exhibition at the 2006 Venice Biennale. This unique show presents existing films, videos and photographs by more than 20 artists and architects to offer subjective and intimate interpretations of urban conditions in all ten cities.

[Tate Modern: Link]

Via We Make Money, Not Art.

From The Ancient City by Fustel de Coulanges (1830-1889), on the power that brought people together to form the first cities:

This power was a belief. Nothing has more power over the soul. A belief is the work of our mind, but we are not on that account free to modify it at will. It is our own creation, but we do not know it. It is human, and we believe it a god. It is the effect of our power, and is stronger than we are. It is in us; it does not quit us: it speaks to us at every moment. If it tells us to obey, we obey; if it traces duties for us, we submit. Man may, indeed, subdue nature, but he is subdued by his own thoughts.
[Doubleday Anchor Books, 1956, p. 132]

Amen to that. I love this guy’s Neoplatonism!

See also — I am not making this up! — Numa Denis Fustel de Coulanges.