Sand rush : the revival of the beach in twentieth-century Los Angeles

Author / Creator

Devienne, Elsa, author

Available as

Online

Physical

Summary

"The Los Angeles shoreline is one of the most iconic natural landscapes in the world. Yet, how natural is it? And how did it come to embody the quintessential modern beach experience? In the early ...

"The Los Angeles shoreline is one of the most iconic natural landscapes in the world. Yet, how natural is it? And how did it come to embody the quintessential modern beach experience? In the early 20th-century, Angelenos routinely lamented the city's crowded, polluted, and eroded shores and many beaches were private and thus inaccessible to the public. Sand Rush recounts the extraordinary beach modernization campaign that transformed Los Angeles into one of the world's greatest coastal metropolises, revealing how the city's man-made shores served as a central locus for the reinvention of seaside leisure and the triumph of modern bodies. Between the 1920s and the 1960s, LA engineers, city officials, urban planners, and the business elite worked together to transform the relatively untouched beaches of the early twentieth century into modern playgrounds for the white middle class. They cleaned up and artificially enlarged the beaches and destroyed old piers and barracks to make room for new accommodations. Members of this powerful "beach lobby" adapted the beach experience to the suburban age, effectively preventing a much-feared "white flight" from the coast. In doing so, they established Southern California as the national reference point for beach planning and opened up vast public spaces for Angelenos to express themselves, show off their bodies, and forge lively subcultures. Their efforts paid off"--

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