The sidewalk metropolis: Street furniture and pedestrian public space in twentieth century Los Angeles (Henri Lefebvre, California)

"The Sidewalk Metropolis: Street Furniture and Public Space in Twentieth Century Los Angeles," attempts to do for the concept of everyday urban public space what social historians have done for the experience of common people. This study extends an analysis of public space beyond the received places of grand public parks, beaches, and plazas. "The Sidewalk Metropolis" attempts to view the famous "car city" from the perspective of the ordinary pedestrian. Further, it argues that space is neither an entirely concrete "thing" or noun, nor exclusively an abstract concept. Rather, space represents a third option: an historically specific construct crackling with its own meanings and significance. In other words, there is most definitely a place for space in time.; Like Progressives era reformers themselves, historians have largely concentrated urban studies on general notions of "growth" and "decline." In contrast, "The Sidewalk Metropolis" examines the previously overlooked Minutes of the Los Angeles Municipal Art Commission, as well as local newspapers, the language and graphic images surrounding ordinary sidewalk material culture, and the city's street furniture (parking meters, street trees, and streetlights) for what we can learn about the desired Los Angeles that two elite groups struggled to create. The city's "aesthetic elite," and its municipal "technical elite," at different times and in different ways, attempted to produce, define, and give meaning to public space itself. And while not an historian himself, French philosopher Henri Lefebvre's theoretical interventions have informed this analysis, yielding something more broadly applicable than a narrow case study of Los Angeles.; In search of the slippery metaphor of "space," this study will address the following questions: Who defines public space over time? Why does public space change and how? What did public space mean to the principle actors at any given time? Why did they make the spatial choices they did? The material culture on the city's everyday sidewalks can help us address these questions.