About me

I am an historical geographer and author. My chief interests are the state of California, the environmental impact of cities upon their hinterlands, and the invisible landscape of New Deal public works. I received a B.A. in history and geography, a M.A. in art history, and a Ph.D. in geography from the University of California at Berkeley with which I have been closely associated for nearly fifty years. I was the first director of the Mono Lake Committee and worked during the 1980s as journalist and TV producer in San Francisco.

The writings of Lewis Mumford and a winter sojourn in Venice in 1985 focused my concern on the environmental costs of building “imperial cities.” I returned to the U.C. Berkeley Department of Geography in 1992 to write a dissertation using San Francisco as a case study of how all great cities operate at the expense of their environs for the benefit of dynastic elites, especially the Thought-Shapers who control mass media.

Published by U.C. Press in 1999 as Imperial San Francisco: Urban Power, Earthly Ruin, the book spent sixteen weeks on the San Francisco Chronicle’s best-seller list and is now considered a classic of urban studies. In the same year, U.C. Press published my collaboration with photographer Robert Dawson Farewell, Promised Land: Waking from the California Dream which chronicles the Golden State’s declining environmental and social health.

I am a frequent radio and television guest and public speaker. I received the 2013 President’s Award from The California Preservation Foundation and the Oscar Lewis Award from the Book Club of California for outstanding contributions to Western History. I am a Companion of the Guild of St George for which I delivered the 2014 Ruskin Lecture in Sheffield, England. I am founder and project scholar of The Living New Deal. 

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