Dream Cities

The Southland is going through transformation, and trauma -- depending on your perspective -- as tall, dense towers burst onto our mostly low-rise cityscape, from downtown to Santa Monica. And they are changing the narrative about home that has shaped LA to itself and the world. That's a narrative that's been explored by landscape designer, teacher and writer, Wade Graham. In his latest book, Dream Cities: Seven Urban Ideas That Shape the World, Graham writes about building types -- and their charismatic creators -- that have defined cities globally: among the seven are pseudo- rural "homesteads," "monuments" and "malls;" also "castles" and "slabs."