Future Fact : NEXT L.A. / A Look at issues, people and ideas helping to shape the emerging metropolis : Southland Put Under Microscope at New USC Regional Studies Center

Southern California is fast becoming the crossroads and meeting place for the world. The significance of that development is being recognized at USC with the establishment of the Southern California Studies Center.

The center, dubbed SC2 by campus officials, is an interdisciplinary organization that will use the Southern California area as a laboratory to study regional changes and patterns taking place here.

“Southern California is an important bellwether for what is happening in other parts of the country, even in other parts of the world,” said Michael Dear, professor of geography at USC and the new academic director of the center.

“People are turning more and more to Los Angeles for lessons,” Dear said. “This is a distinct change from other eras when Los Angeles was seen as the exception, rather than the rule.”

The center’s written purpose is to “describe, explain, monitor and guide the regional transformations in sociocultural, political and economic life in Southern California as they evolve through time and space.”

By bringing together information from a variety of fields and sources, the center expects to help researchers in diverse fields work together and pool their talents. Curriculum innovation will make use of the research findings and students will have access to developments to keep them on the cutting edge, Dear said.

Dear pointed out that the Southern California Studies Center differs from other think tanks in its interdisciplinary approach to a wide variety of regional trends and problems.

“Many other centers look at specific themes in the region. We are trying to fuse all those . . . to make a complete fabric, a complete picture of what is happening in Los Angeles,” Dear said.

Although the focus of the Southern California Studies Center will be on local issues, Dear and others recognize the global applicability and importance of the work that will be carried out there.