The radical polymath Mike Davis published his first article in this magazine in the fall 2014 cities-themed issue, “Paint the Town Red.” Coincidentally, that issue was also my first foray into writing for Jacobin and the first print issue of the magazine I had seen. (Of course, I immediately became a subscriber.) Finding Davis’s byline in the table of contents was exciting. I don’t know him personally, but I always want to know what Mike Davis thinks about everything, particularly anything having to do with urban life and death.

Davis has covered a mind-bending range of topics over the course of his roughly four decades of writing, but some of his best-known work is in the mode of urban critique, particularly of Los Angeles. His book City of Quartz became a surprise best-seller, pillorying the Los Angeles police state in all its manifestations while illuminating its ever-present histories of resistance. In his most recent book, Set the Night on Fire, Davis and coauthor Jon Weiner resurrect the ferment of Los Angeles in the 1960s.

But Davis also wrote important books on San Diego (Under the Perfect Sun, with Jim Miller and Kelly Mayhew); on the political economy of informal housing for the poor around the world (Planet of Slums); on histories, threats, and visions of large-scale urban destruction (Dead Cities); and on Latino modes of urbanization (Magical Urbanism). Unlike the bland schlock that often passes for “urbanism,” his critique is razor sharp and unsparing, and always points to the possibilities for a better future.