| A Matter of Scale: A paper presented at the Southern California Environment 18-20 September, 1997 In the 1920s and 1930s, the village and environs of Palm Springs, California, were transformed. Once the home of a tiny agricultural settlement, sanitarium, and Indian reservation, the region had exploded by 1939 into a booming winter resort. The shared history of Palm Springs and the neighboring Agua Caliente Indian Reservation demonstrates that urban growth in this period was not confined to large metropolitan areas such as Los Angeles, the Bay Area, and San Francisco. Though their community was small and remote by comparison, the villagers of Palm Springs, the Agua Caliente Cahuilla, and the Bureau of Indian Affairs too found their hands full with the problems of sanitation, rapid growth, class and ethnicity that affected the larger cities. By examining the history of Palm Springs' development, we open a window not only onto these larger trends, but also make visible the subtler ways in which place, ecosystem, and relationships are shaped and contested during periods of sudden growth.
The Main Points The case study of Palm Springs (and by extension, other small places) casts light on a period of urban growth usually examined through studies of large metropolitan areas. The answers to the question of "what is proper land use" are linked to, and revealing of, patterns of behavior and thought that have ramifications in a larger area as well. The examination of contested land use debates reveals lines of tension not only between but within groups; these lines of tension in turn illumine changes in the patterns of behavior and thought of social groups (e.g. changes in Cahuilla cartographies). |