This project makes Italian architect Giovanni Brino's book, Los Angeles. La città capitalista (1978), available to an English-reading public for the first time, contributing a vital missing text to the study of urbanism in Los Angeles. Using architecture, advertising, and the lens of post-war private development in Northern Italy, Brino studies Southern California's built environment as having been made through the production and promotion of lifestyle and real estate. Through 27 essays and 1,074 images, Brino breaks apart LA. into the details that produce the whole, arguing that the city is a quintessential product of capitalism and that its processes of becoming could be repeated elsewhere. Even though appreciated by the likes of Umberto Eco, the book has largely been lost to time. This reprint includes the original Italian text accompanied by an English translation and a new introduction that places the book in both historical and contemporary context.

Los Angeles. La città capitalista (Medicea Editrice, 1978) was written by Italian architect and professor Giovanni Brino (1936–2020). He taught architecture at the Politecnico di Torino (1970–2008) and at universities across Italy, France, and Switzerland. Brino was a restoration consultant to the city of Marseille (1988–2005) and advisor to the French Ministry for restoration of Villa Medici, Rome (1988–93). The subjects of his books range from London's Crystal Palace to urban farming to the oeuvre of his teacher, the designer Carlo Mollino, though much of his publishing was dedicated to encyclopedic surveys of color and historical site analysis.

Anthony Carfello is an editor, writer, and exhibition maker. He is deputy director of the Wende Museum of the Cold War in Culver City, California, and a writing instructor for Temple University’s Los Angeles program. With the curators Shoghig Halajian and Suzy Halajian, Carfello received support from the Andy Warhol Foundation’s Arts Writers Grant in 2017 to establish the online journal Georgia. From 2009–19, he curated and managed exhibitions at the MAK Center for Art and Architecture, Los Angeles, and ran the international MAK–Schindler artists and architects-in-residence program. Since 2013, he has copyedited and conceptualized publications for various arts institutions in Los Angeles, London, and Berlin. Carfello's writing has been published by Artillery, REDCAT, Terremoto (MX), and X-TRA, among others. He studied at the Otis College of Art and Design (LA), the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and the University of Iowa.