COCKTAIL PARTY CITY Conference «THE PRIVATIZATION OF CITIES IN A HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE», La Sorbonne 2004.

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Los Angeles is the model of a privately-built city. All of its areas were built by real estate developers. All of its " public services " (water, gas, electricity, trains, telephone, public transportation…) have always been supplied by private companies. Private companies have also built its train stations, its beaches, its museums, its churches… The only elements that were financed by the city, the state or the federal state are the freeways and roads : i.e. individual transportation. Can there be any kind of public space in such a city ? Isn't it a contradiction with the free market logic ? Is there a southern californian equivalent of the idealized greek agora : - inherited from the past, - integrated in the urban structure, - access-free, - open, - and frequented by the whole population ? In a city where 90 % of the population move around in a car, traditional open public places like streets, squares or public gardens are not adapted, and not usable as social places. Only homeless people and tourists use the city in a traditional way - walking around on foot. A journalist of the Los Angeles Times describes the open spaces of the city as " a place that's been abandoned to the poor and the bandits and deserted by the rich and middle-class people ". These open spaces are no longer public ; they do not constitute a unified and consistent system ; they do dot structure the city.

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