Reyner Banham examined the built environment of Los Angeles in a way no
architectural historian before him had done, looking with fresh eyes at
its manifestations of popular taste and industrial ingenuity, as well as
its more traditional modes of residential and commercial building. His
construct of "four ecologies" examined the ways Angelenos relate to the
beach, the freeways, the flatlands, and the foothills. Banham delighted
in this mobile city and identified it as an exemplar of the posturban
future. In a spectacular new foreword, architect and scholar Joe Day
explores how the structure of Los Angeles, the concept of "ecology," and
the relevance of Banham's ideas have changed over the past thirty-five
years.