Description
Book SynopsisAlthough better known for its sunny skies, Los Angeles suffers devastating flooding. This book explores a little-known chapter in the city's history - the failures to control floods that occurred throughout the twentieth century. It offers a lesson - both of things gone wrong and a glimpse of how they might be improved.
Table of ContentsList of Illustrations Acknowledgments Prologue. Water in Los Angeles: A Portrait of an Urban Ecosystem 1. City of a Thousand Rivers: The Emergence of an Urban Ecosystem, 1884--1914 2. A Centralized Authority and a Comprehensive Plan: Response to the Floods, 1914--1917 3. A Weir to Do Man's Bidding: The Great San Gabriel Dam Fiasco, 1917--1929 4. A More Effective Scouring Agent: The New Year's Eve Debris Flood and the Collapse of Local Flood Control, 1930--1934 5. The Sun Is Shining over Southern California: The Politics of Federal Flood Control in Los Angeles, 1935--1969 6. Necessary but Not Sufficient: Storms, Environmentalism, and New Visions for Flood Control, 1969--2001 Epilogue. The Historical Structure of Disorder: Urban Ecology in Los Angeles and Beyond Notes Bibliography Index
