Rating: 
Summary: A Fascinating Portrait of a Great American City.
Review:
Written in the rich narrative style of a novel, William Fulton's "The Reluctant Metropolis" creates a fascinating portrait of a big city's evolution.
A respected journalist and city planner, Fulton has travelled the breadth and width of the sprawling Los Angeles metropolis - an area nearly the size of Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut combined - to uncover "the stories behind the stories" about how the city has grown and changed in the last twenty years. He portrays a region on the brink of disaster, as politicians, developers, and even ordinary citizens shape L.A.'s future through short-sighted political gamesmanship.
"The Reluctant Metropolis" spins twelve different narrative yarns, covering such topics as L.A.'s "white elephant rail transit system, the battle over the future of South Central after the 1992 riots, and the emergence of Las Vegas as a "new" Los Angeles, spinning out of control with rapid growth. The twelve narrative tales are wrapped inside beginning and ending chapters that describe the region's prevailing "cocoon citizenship," the narrow-minded political mindset of communities and institutions that fail to see how they are woven together to create this reluctant metropolis.
"The Reluctant Metropolis" offers a fresh new perspective on how any major city - not just Los Angeles - can learn from its mistakes and misperceptions to forge a blueprint for a better urban environment.
William Fulton is a journalist and urban planner who has lived and worked in Southern California since 1981. A former chairman of the West Hollywood Planning Commission, Mr. Fulton is editor of "California Planning & Development Report" and author of "Guide to California Planning," the standard textbook on urban planning in California. He lives in Ventura, California with his wife, Victoria Torf Fulton, an artist, and their daughter, Sara.
Rating: 
Summary: A Portrait of the People and Events Shaping "Modern" L.A.
Review: The power of this book is the "up close and personal" portrait it gives of the people and events that shaped the modern era of Los Angeles and the sinking of the illusion of eternal land. What a story he tells, including naming the key players and their real estate interests, especially the complicit role of planning professionals and politicians. Changes in the region take place so quickly that current events need a scorecard and a constant updating from this traveling historian who puts miles on his car that are needed just to keep up with it all, and to keep us conscious of what is happening before our eyes. Unlike many of the fashionably post-modern critics with their morbid fascination for the contradictions and the big picture, Fulton doesn't theorize or jargonize about the City. Like a hunter who tracks his prey by following all the little bent branches and signs of habitation, he takes us to the places that make up the region, Bell, Commerce, Lakewood, Lynwood, and like a good hunter, he does not stand apart from his prey. Fulton shows basic empathy for all the misguided professionals and greedy politicians who unconsciously and consciously sullied and exploited the region, as well as the naiveté and the shortage of savvy of some of its would be saviors. Written like a compelling detective story, but one for which he does not have an ending, the book is a must for anyone who lives in the region. They will be both weighted down and enlightened by reading it, and for you people from other regions, for example burgeoning cities in the NIC regions of Asia, you best read it now to get an idea of what is coming your way! George Rand, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Architecture and Planning
Graduate School of Architecture
UCLA
Rating:
Summary: Pasadena Star News Review, June 8, 1997
Review: You and I aren't fools. We keep our eyes open. We follow the news. But the region where we live is so huge and complex. And changing so quickly. With short deadlines and tight budgets, most of what the media packages as "news" is not -- just old caricatures recycled with new names. Southern California is romanticized, demonized and satirized, because Southern California stereotypes make for great entertainment. As amusement, this works. But half truths, myths and stereotypes make it virtually impossible to talk seriously about our region's future. Imagine trying to raise a child if all you had to go on was a video of the Hollywood movie, "Parenthood." The movie makes you laugh, it makes you cry. But it's useless for helping you figure out how to manage your family budget or what to do when your baby wakes up crying in the middle of the night. That's our position as citizens, voters and taxpayers. Clueless. Not a problem -- if "Southern California" was just a soap opera. Or if we lived in a monarchy. But it's not and we don't. Driving one rainy day from his home in Ventura County through "suburb after suburb, shopping center after shopping center and tract after tract," journalist and planner Bill Fulton began a journey of discovery that led him to write an extraordinary book called "The Reluctant Metropolis: The Politics of Urban Growth in Los Angeles." He calls it "an amalgamation of political science, history, sociology and urban planning" aimed at "telling good stories and ferreting out their meaning." With a passion for accuracy and depth, he illuminates overlooked parts of the landscape, like the seventy-foot tall mountain of freeway debris dumped across the street from homes on a quiet street in Huntington Park. He sheds revealing new light on familiar stories like the Orange County bankruptcy. Uncovering the hidden social fault lines beneath the surface of Southern California, Fulton's book is a rich portrait of a giant metropolis in transition, a practical guidebook for understanding where we really are and how we got here. "It is not surprising," Fulton writes in the introduction, "that when Los Angeles finally grew so vast as to be unfathomable even to those who lived there -- when the gap between the illusion of a spacious suburban lifestyle and the daily reality of a massive metropolis could no longer be papered over with dreams -- the growth machine began to collapse under its own weight. Happy suburbanites turned angry about traffic jams and high taxes, reducing their tolerance for more suburbs. Struggling inner cities began to rise up against decades of neglect. Farmers and environmentalists protested the loss of open land. In short, the formula that had built Los Angeles so quickly no longer worked." "While the growth consensus has collapsed," Fulton continues, "no new paradigm has emerged to take its place." While we continue to assume that Southern California will grow bigger, hardly anyone imagines life will be better. There will certainly be a future for the nation's largest urban area and the world's twelfth largest economy. But will it be one we want to live in ?Only if we make it so. The quest begins when "we redefine community more broadly to include not just our street or tract, but our town, our metropolis, our region," Fulton writes. "We can no longer afford to be suburbanites, no matter where we live. We must instead, learn once again to become citizens of this metropolis, no matter how reluctant a metropolis it may be." Where to start? Go to your local library or bookstore and read this book. Rick Cole
Urbanist and ex-Mayor of Pasaden
Rating: 
Summary: Fulton's Folly
Review: Bill Fulton is often lionized by planning "professionals" and students for his writing in this book but the truth is that his foray into the application reality of his theory has Ventura on the ropes. Fulton is the architect of several local no-growth initiatives such as Save Our Agricultural Resources (SOAR) as well as spearheading a housing development-blocking effort a couple of years ago for Ventura hillsides. What has since happened as any college freshman taking Econ 101 would understand, is that the supply of housing has constricted as demand increased and resulted in the skyrocketing price of local housing. Fulton did nothing after pushing these no-growth initiatives to stoke the fires of development that is required to prevent this housing supply constipation. Fulton has now gotten himself elected to the Ventura City Council and it has become easy to see his political agenda that before has been hidden and masquerading as thoughtful intellect. This guy is no responsible academic or planning God but merely another no-growth advocate pushing a political agenda. Don't waste your time reading his stuff unless you have nothing else with which to stock your water closet area.
Rating:
Summary: Fulton's Folly
Review: Bill Fulton is often lionized by planning "professionals" and students for his writing in this book but the truth is that his foray into the application reality of his theory has Ventura on the ropes. Fulton is the architect of several local no-growth initiatives such as Save Our Agricultural Resources (SOAR) as well as spearheading a housing development-blocking effort a couple of years ago for Ventura hillsides. What has since happened as any college freshman taking Econ 101 would understand, is that the supply of housing has constricted as demand increased and resulted in the skyrocketing price of local housing. Fulton did nothing after pushing these no-growth initiatives to stoke the fires of development that is required to prevent this housing supply constipation. Fulton has now gotten himself elected to the Ventura City Council and it has become easy to see his political agenda that before has been hidden and masquerading as thoughtful intellect. This guy is no responsible academic or planning God but merely another no-growth advocate pushing a political agenda. Don't waste your time reading his stuff unless you have nothing else with which to stock your water closet area.
Rating:
Summary: Fascinating
Review: Excellent and fascinating read for anyone interested in Los Angeles. The first 20 pages are worth the price of the book.
Rating: 
Summary: The joke in Los Angeles
Review: The joke in Los Angeles is 'I've never been to downtown Los Angeles'. This is book that tells all about the decentralization of LA. Unlike most cities in America, Los Angeles' decentralization is a product of the explained 'growth machine'. One of the most unique cities in America and possibly one of the most depressing. I would have given this book 5 stars but i award 5 stars to inspirational books. The politics of Los Angeles makes me want to curl into a ball and shove myself into a dark corner (no worries though, it's perpetually sunny here).
Rating:
Summary: Still a best-seller
Review: THE RELUCTANT METROPOLIS continues to be a regional best-seller, ranking No. 10 on the LA Times hardcover nonfiction list as of August 3
Rating:
Summary: So that's how it really is...
Review: This book is a must read for anyone willing to expose themselves to the stories behind the stories of Los Angeles. The stories reveal the apathetic and self-centered nature of some Los Angeles citizens (who will never really admit they are from "Los Angeles"), and sets the stage for an entire change of mindset among Los Angelenos. This mindset is one that takes notice of the community, and the larger metropolis that communities make up. For a graduate city planning student as I, these stories help shape some basic values of mine regarding the nature of cities and communities. I strongly recommend this book.
Rating:
Summary: So that's how it really is...
Review: This book is a must read for anyone willing to expose themselves to the stories behind the stories of Los Angeles. The stories reveal the apathetic and self-centered nature of some Los Angeles citizens (who will never really admit they are from "Los Angeles"), and sets the stage for an entire change of mindset among Los Angelenos. This mindset is one that takes notice of the community, and the larger metropolis that communities make up. For a graduate city planning student as I, these stories help shape some basic values of mine regarding the nature of cities and communities. I strongly recommend this book.
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