What Los Angeles tells us about Dracula Urbanism

In their piece “Toward a Dracula Urbanism: Smart City Building in Flint and Jakarta,” Wilson Wyly (2022) inaugurate urbanism as an explanatory framework for identifying previously unnoticed dynamics advanced capitalist cities, particularly those engaging smart city initiatives. From the perspective of LA, radically different context from Wyly’s choices Jakarta, I argue that logic can be extended beyond imbrication real estate states cities to shed new light on other forms urban redevelopment consequences such gentrification exclusion more broadly. Additionally, emphasize importance local multi-scalar urbanist imagination, make argument against so-called centerless unbounded character which show are mired inter-urban competition discourses shaped by ever-present, politico-legally defined borders.