City of Quartz (1990)

Davis dissects how the arid basin of Los Angeles, hemmed in by chaparral-covered hills and seismic faultlines, generated an aggressively privatised landscape of car corridors and suburban sprawl. He reveals how this harsh desert environment and its contentious water history produced fortified corporate bunkers, panoptic public architecture, and gated enclaves designed to segregate social life behind defensive concrete walls.