Mike Davis

Though over a year and a half has passed since September 11, 2001, the emotions surrounding the destruction of the Twin Towers remain raw in New York. As the editor of an influential magazine recently remarked to me, “Living in the city now, you still think about it a lot. Every time there’s a crowd of people, and every time you hear a siren, and every time a plane flies overhead, it comes back to you.”

While Americans across the country buy duct tape and plastic sheeting to prepare for “inevitable” chemical attacks on Des Moines, Spokane, and Albuquerque, the sci-fi surreality of the collapsing World Trade Center continues to haunt New York residents more than anyone else. In New York, the apocalyptic terror of the suicide hijackings is not a symbol; it is neither a threat from abroad nor a cry for international social justice. It is steel and ash and human remains, and a huge empty pit which many of us pass daily. 

And so it was somewhat jarring to read Mike Davis’ “The Flames of New York,” the first in a collection of previously published essays entitled Dead Cities, in which he artfully creates a context for the suicide hijackings of September 11 within the landscape of the dying American cities he has written about for the past decade. In this lead essay, it is almost as though the falling Twin Towers fit into a natural progression towards the inevitable demise of the city, foretold by science-fiction novelist H.G. Wells and noted alongside issues like urban decay, environmental recklessness, police brutality, racism, and corporate greed.

I say “artfully” because it is clear from this essay that Davis is an artist rather than a journalist. He barely makes the pretense of objectivity, and his essays read often like sermons to the converted, as though his objective is not to spur change, but to provide grist for fellow detractors. He presents America as a soulless, toxic wasteland whose hubris is leading us into a Blade Runner-esque post-apocalyptic reality. As compelling a picture as Davis paints, it is hard to imagine that anyone, even his most loyal supporters, could truly mistake this futuristic urban nightmare for reality.

Instead, Davis’ essays are an artistic representation. The reader reads each essay with the expectation that it will present a version of reality somewhat skewed by Davis’ socialist outlook. (Davis is a co-editor of The Year Left: An American Socialist Yearbook.) Davis’ essays—though chilling enough in their implications to make the most stable person a little paranoid—should be read with the understanding that the melodramatic scenarios presented are not “real,” but rather an extreme version of reality, a tool of debate.

Throughout the essays Davis examines many of the major themes of modern American urban life: white flight from city centers, de-industrialization, housing and job segregation, the homogenization and recklessness of development, and the destruction of the natural environment. He challenges the much-touted “renaissance” of America’s cities presented by the mainstream press as undisputable fact during the Internet boom of the roaring 1990s. The scope of his criticism is broad: he finds racism and encroaching disaster in the cities of America, blames industrialization and corporate greed for the mis-development of the West, and abandons hope in the face of a government that has become more and more restrictive in responding to the threat of global terrorism.

But aside from the inclusion of September 11 in this litany of man-made modern disasters, Davis offers few new ideas in Dead Cities. Criticizing America for crass consumerism, soulless suburbs, and general excess is hardly original territory. Beat writer Jack Kerouac was writing about these very issues over fifty years ago, social critics have been harping on them for decades, and Davis himself has addressed them in his past work.

And so it is disappointing to read Dead Cities and come out of the experience not feeling as if Davis has taken these well-worn ideas a step further. It is as though he is mired in a perpetual adolescence, voicing his angst through rhetorically attractive but empty critiques. Davis points out the hypocrisies of the dominant ideologies without fulfilling the responsibility of criticism to offer a better vision.

His preface, entitled “The Flames of New York,” which examines September 11 as a harbinger for the death of the city, is the only new essay in this volume, and is, in some ways, the best. Whether or not one agrees with Davis that September 11 may, in the end, trigger the extinction of skyscrapers, his observation that the “fear economy” (the military and security firms rushing to exploit the aftershocks of September 11) has limited individual freedoms and changed the national focus over the past two years is undisputable. America’s recent military actions in world beyond, whatever one may think of them, can be directly traced to the fear that September 11 spawned.

Davis also draws a connection between New York City’s Giuliani-era policing tactics (often described as “fascist”) and the government’s post-September 11 crackdown on civil liberties and immigration, most notably through the USA Patriot Act, which widely expanded the powers of the FBI and the CIA.

That dissent against these infringements is justified goes without saying. It is becoming clear that the Bush administration is setting Orwellian precedents when it comes to snooping and wiretapping. But Davis completely ignores the other side of the coin: the actual, present danger that exists, which he might feel more acutely if he were living, as New Yorkers are, in a city successfully targeted by terrorists. Millions of us, while harboring a healthy fear of Big Brother schemes, will gladly make some tradeoffs like being frisked a little more vigorously at the airports if that means there is a chance of avoiding another September 11.

And so it was somewhat jarring to read Mike Davis’ “The Flames of New York,” the first in a collection of previously published essays entitled Dead Cities, in which he artfully creates a context for the suicide hijackings of September 11 within the landscape of the dying American cities he has written about for the past decade. In this lead essay, it is almost as though the falling Twin Towers fit into a natural progression towards the inevitable demise of the city, foretold by science-fiction novelist H.G. Wells and noted alongside issues like urban decay, environmental recklessness, police brutality, racism, and corporate greed.

I say “artfully” because it is clear from this essay that Davis is an artist rather than a journalist. He barely makes the pretense of objectivity, and his essays read often like sermons to the converted, as though his objective is not to spur change, but to provide grist for fellow detractors. He presents America as a soulless, toxic wasteland whose hubris is leading us into a Blade Runner-esque post-apocalyptic reality. As compelling a picture as Davis paints, it is hard to imagine that anyone, even his most loyal supporters, could truly mistake this futuristic urban nightmare for reality.

Instead, Davis’ essays are an artistic representation. The reader reads each essay with the expectation that it will present a version of reality somewhat skewed by Davis’ socialist outlook. (Davis is a co-editor of The Year Left: An American Socialist Yearbook.) Davis’ essays—though chilling enough in their implications to make the most stable person a little paranoid—should be read with the understanding that the melodramatic scenarios presented are not “real,” but rather an extreme version of reality, a tool of debate.

Throughout the essays Davis examines many of the major themes of modern American urban life: white flight from city centers, de-industrialization, housing and job segregation, the homogenization and recklessness of development, and the destruction of the natural environment. He challenges the much-touted “renaissance” of America’s cities presented by the mainstream press as undisputable fact during the Internet boom of the roaring 1990s. The scope of his criticism is broad: he finds racism and encroaching disaster in the cities of America, blames industrialization and corporate greed for the mis-development of the West, and abandons hope in the face of a government that has become more and more restrictive in responding to the threat of global terrorism.

But aside from the inclusion of September 11 in this litany of man-made modern disasters, Davis offers few new ideas in Dead Cities. Criticizing America for crass consumerism, soulless suburbs, and general excess is hardly original territory. Beat writer Jack Kerouac was writing about these very issues over fifty years ago, social critics have been harping on them for decades, and Davis himself has addressed them in his past work.

And so it is disappointing to read Dead Cities and come out of the experience not feeling as if Davis has taken these well-worn ideas a step further. It is as though he is mired in a perpetual adolescence, voicing his angst through rhetorically attractive but empty critiques. Davis points out the hypocrisies of the dominant ideologies without fulfilling the responsibility of criticism to offer a better vision.

His preface, entitled “The Flames of New York,” which examines September 11 as a harbinger for the death of the city, is the only new essay in this volume, and is, in some ways, the best. Whether or not one agrees with Davis that September 11 may, in the end, trigger the extinction of skyscrapers, his observation that the “fear economy” (the military and security firms rushing to exploit the aftershocks of September 11) has limited individual freedoms and changed the national focus over the past two years is undisputable. America’s recent military actions in world beyond, whatever one may think of them, can be directly traced to the fear that September 11 spawned.

Davis also draws a connection between New York City’s Giuliani-era policing tactics (often described as “fascist”) and the government’s post-September 11 crackdown on civil liberties and immigration, most notably through the USA Patriot Act, which widely expanded the powers of the FBI and the CIA.

That dissent against these infringements is justified goes without saying. It is becoming clear that the Bush administration is setting Orwellian precedents when it comes to snooping and wiretapping. But Davis completely ignores the other side of the coin: the actual, present danger that exists, which he might feel more acutely if he were living, as New Yorkers are, in a city successfully targeted by terrorists. Millions of us, while harboring a healthy fear of Big Brother schemes, will gladly make some tradeoffs like being frisked a little more vigorously at the airports if that means there is a chance of avoiding another September 11.