Introduction
Over the years, there have many cities within the United States that have been developed in terms of infrastructure and housing facilities, leaving the case for landscape and sustainability of the natural resources behind. Historically, Los Angeles is one of the big cities that have been developed on the basis of utilizing the natural resources of the nearby region and focusing on building an urban metropolitan city. Sustainability has been put on the backfoot, for the past century as urbanization and incoming flow of population has seen investment in every form of infrastructure, leaving the once naturally beautiful region with significant park and recreation crisis and converted the river into an industrial sewage draining system. Overtime, industrialization, increasing housing developed with the flow of population has seen the city and the nearby region losing its natural beauty with no focus on sustainable development (Davis, 1988, p. 59-61).
Analysis of Situation
The problem of sustainability has been present in the city of Los Angeles, especially with its willing intention of being stingy for providing public spaces. The focus on building the most developed city in the west coast of America and making sure they do not fall behind other cities such as Seattle with better natural beauty. With limited public spaces such as parks and other recreational facilities, the people of Los Angeles have been deprived of basic facilities that are present in other major American cities. The things that made Los Angeles naturally beautiful, suffered majorly through the incoming population and infrastructural development. As a result, the Los Angeles environment suffered significantly due to the continuous form of neglect from the people in charge of development (Davis, 1988, p. 59-67).
One of the essential contributors of the mismanagement of sustainability in Los Angeles was the treatment of the Los Angeles River. As the river used to flood the city in the 19th century and there has been devastating results of the flood in the past, the city focused on the development of public works to build necessary infrastructure to avoid any future floods in the 1930s. The new deal financed the public works developed and provided work for many unemployed Americans in California. As a result, the state was able to generate jobs for people, but overtime the result of the public works in and around the Los Angeles river increased beach pollution to such a level that it possibly killed the Santa Monica Bay area and increased sewage in the river due to the wastage coming from the industrial plants (Davis, 1988, p. 67-72).
Housing is another source of destruction of the Los Angeles greenbelt as incoming population required increased housing development. Millions of people came to the Los Angeles are every century and with time it became clear that more houses were needed for housing them. The Los Angeles neighborhood started filling with more housing projects; amazingly all of them without any greenbelt for the local community. Regions such as Santa Barbara, San Fernando Valley and Santa Monica Bay area were filled with more housing projects, with demand for housing increasing with time and increased industrialization and population flow. The government also played a major role in helping housing companies to develop more projects and ensure limited land was available for parks and recreational facilities. Many farmers were forced to sell off their lands and the lands were reappraised for residential real estate, it was like a “self-fulfilling prophecy which spread like wildfire” (Davis, 1988, p. 76).
With continuous negligence from the California government from the destruction of the landscapes and thousands of trees, Los Angeles became home to millions and several industries.
The sprawl of land became a national scandal and the Kennedy administration went ahead by passing legislation in 1961 to develop urban open spaces. Conservation of the natural areas came to forefront to protect the accelerated neighborhood decay. Several conservationists also joined the bandwagon and worked on protecting several landscapes in the Southern California region nearby the city of Los Angeles. The need of developing open spaces and maintaining the greenbelt came to the fore as Eckbo from environmentally planning firm EDAW claimed that population needs to be relocated for redevelopment of the erstwhile landscapes. Eckbo also added that, “no comparable urban region in the nation even remotely approaches the basin’s inadequacy” (Davis, 1988, p.83)
Over the years, Los Angeles city lost its Eden, with massive development efforts to ensure it was the primal city of the west coast. But, things have been changing since the 1970s and the efforts of conservationists and development of new cities that are based on the concept of maintaining the nature of the region, rather than working of the destruction of the natural greenbelt. Cities such as Newhall Ranch is one of the promising regions that have been built for the need of marinating natural resources and have been the cause of many people relocating from the city of Los Angeles as it lacks the necessary facilities such as parks and beautiful California landscapes. Conservation has been the primary focus of the new cities and several people from the city are realizing the need to redevelop the LA greenbelt through sustainable development (NPR, 2013).
References
Davis, M. (1998). How Eden Lost its Garden. In Ecology of fear: Los Angeles and the imagination of disaster (pp. 59-91). New York, NY: Metropolitan Books.
NPR. (3 November 2013). How An Aqueduct Turned Los Angeles Into A 'Garden Of Eden'. Retrieved 10 February 2016 from, http://www.npr.org/2013/11/03/242819699/how-an-aqueduct-turned-los-angeles-into-a-garden-of-eden
