The New Urban Studies

By D.W. MILLER

Los Angeles scholars use their region and their ideas to end the dominance of the 'Chicago School'

Scholars who puzzle over this city for a living can choose among an infinite number of vantage points. Michael J. Dear prefers 75 miles out or 2,000 feet up.

A professor of geography at the University of Southern California, Mr. Dear believes that the region's spatial arrangements reveal something of its social ones. So he periodically drives out to the city's desert periphery