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Transforming California: A Political History of Land Use and Development. By Stephanie S. Pincetl. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999. xxii, 372 pp. $45.00, ISBN 0-80186110-1.)
This book does more than examine patterns of land use in California. It also explores the nature of American government, using California as a case study. Trained in anthropology and urban planning, Stephanie S. Pincetl is as concerned with how poorly Los Angeles and San Francisco serve democratic ideals and the needs of their residents as she is with the failure of the state's political institutions to protect its natural resources and environment from rampant growth. California's largest cities encourage individualism, alienation, and class divisions rather than common purpose and civic virtue.
Jeffersonian ideals that celebrated individual autonomy and independence have survived even though they "fundamentally contradict...