On Mike Davis' S Urban Disaster

Mike Davis is not only a celebrated American historian and social activist, but a radical,outstanding urban ideologist and representative scholar of Los Angeles School since the1980 s. His “noir” views have been received much attention in the field of current urban study,he sharply criticizes the hidden darkness and illusion under the gorgeous appearance of Los Angeles.This paper is divided into the introduction, body and conclusion. The introduction mainly expounds the paper’s topics basis, current research status, the existence of the research questions, research ideas, methods and innovations and so on. Body part has three chapters,the text seeks to analyze Davis’ s urban disaster thoughts on the basis of oversea and domestic research of Davis, uses Los Angeles as a point cut to analyze serious urban spacious segregation and ecological disasters of the city, clarify the existence of Dystopia”phenomenon in Los Angeles and make wise judgment of Davis’ s pessimistic future forecast of Los Angeles. In tidal wave of globalization’s background, these research all have a profound practical significance in accelerating the development of Chinese urbanization. The first chapter analyzes the background of Davis’ s City disaster concept formation, we begin to analyze the current situation and problems of Los Angeles’ s urban development and the impact of Davis’ s own life experiences in shaping his city thought. In this process, we can understand how Davis’ s urban disaster concept gradually forms.The second chapter elaborates the main content of Davis’ s city disaster concept. Firstly, it introduces the concrete manifestation of social fears(urban spatial segregation and racial unrest) and ecological disaster(natural disasters and threats to wildlife).Secondly, it demonstrates the dialectical relationship of social fear and ecological disaster, they differ from each other, and relate with each other, then reach the mutual unity, they altogether reveal the wrong ideas and the inequities in the process of Los Angeles’ s urban development. The third chapter reveals the reflection on Davies’ s city disaster concept. Firstly, it explores the theoretical contributions and inadequacy of Davis’ s urban disaster thought. It mainly states his theoretical contributions by analyzing his academic influence and the impact on the news media; his theoretical t deficiency embody on a comprehensive consideration of the overall grasp of Davis’ s whole thought and domestic and foreign scholars evaluation of Davis. Secondly, it tries to find beneficial experience which Chinese urban development can learn from.As a post-modern representative metropolis, the development of Los Angeles has global characteristic. In Davis’ s creation, the development of Los Angeles is a crystal mirror of the world other city’s urban development. Therefore, the research on Los Angeles’ s fear and disaster in the process of urbanization have a profound significance on the issues andchallenges of urbanization in China.