\u201cAnd the mountains erupt, and the valley is sucked into cracks in the earth.\u201d<\/p>\n
There\u2019s just something so incredibly ominous that permeates throughout the city of Los Angeles. Just yesterday, the nation\u2019s second-largest city was ranked ninth by the Guardian<\/a> in its list of the world\u2019s highest-risk cities. Los Angeles\u2019 location as a city is neither ideal nor safe. The city is built on the San Andreas Fault in a valley thickened by smog. L.A.\u2019s lack of inherent water sources forced it to dry out the surrounding countryside through irrigation projects in the early 1900s, leading to lower rainfalls and rural drought (22). Mike Davis\u2019 Ecology of Fear: Los Angeles and the Imagination of Disaster<\/i> attempts to determine why and how so many people populated a region so vulnerable. To Davis, shortsighted magisterial and economic decisions have put tens of millions of citizens at risk from earthquakes, drought, floods, wildfires, and a host of other disasters.<\/p>\n While Davis does not document a Gilded Age disaster, he argues that many policies adopted during the era had lasting impacts. Because the city had low seismic activity during its expansion period, urban planners had no idea that there would be more than 50 active faults underneath the city (27). The biggest problem of the age was the water supply, which city officials remedied by syphoning off water from rural rivers and lakes into aqueducts for the city (more research to come on that soon!). As a result, farmers and ranchers were dried out of their land and forced to move into the increasingly dangerous city limits (21). Economic interests were not deterred, but rather emboldened, by the possibility of disaster. The boosterism of the Gilded Age (as noted by Rozario) merely encouraged homeowners and businesses to rebuild right exactly where they were whenever disaster struck.<\/p>\n