Renewing the Dream

California, once the epitome of car culture, is now leading the green movement, transitioning away from the internal combustion engine and to some extent the car—and having to rethink how we live, as this extraordinary urban planning manifesto explores.

Drawing together original research, design studies, and cultural essays, Renewing the Dream offers the first comprehensive look at the changes remaking the mobility landscape of Southern California—and the opportunities to reappropriate vast tracts of the city for new uses. Edited by James Sanders and produced with the global architecture studio Woods Bagot, this book explores the forces propelling this shift as well as its controversial impact on Los Angeles, as a city once famed for its car-oriented, low-rise landscape is transformed into a more diverse, more dense, more complex place.

This many-sided portrait offers essays by a distinguished group of writers, designs for the city’s future, and studies of how the new mobility might allow areas now dedicated to parking and gas stations to be reimagined. Rounding out its portrait are historic photographs, maps, Hollywood images, and the artwork of David Hockney, Catherine Opie, Ed Ruscha, Wayne Thiebaud, Carlos Almaraz, and stills from La La Land to Chinatown. The book is a thought piece on the future of American cities, with lessons that will carry resonance all around the globe.