A 21st Century Vision for L.A. Means Work

At a meeting last week of 150 high-tech entrepreneurs of the Digital Coast Roundtable and again at last weekend’s giant Global Cities conference at UCLA--with 400 delegates from 35 nations in attendance--Mayor Richard Riordan declared Los Angeles to be “the capital of the 21st century.”

Reactions were revealing.

The entrepreneurs, with some qualifications, accepted the rallying cry. But the scholars at UCLA thought that the Los Angeles “city region,” which they defined as all of Southern California, had a lot of work to do before rhetoric came close to matching reality.

Both groups were right. The Los Angeles region--the five- or even seven-county area of Southern California--is already one of America’s global regions with economic output of more than $500 billion a year. That’s considerably more than Mexico, the Netherlands and Australia, not quite as much as Spain or Canada. It’s an economy destined to grow even more prominent in the early years of the next century.

But there is obvious--and less obvious--work to do. We should note what needs to be done, and is being done, so we don’t get lost either in rhetorical flourishes about the future or bleak despair about the present.

Obvious work includes the need for affordable housing. The Los Angeles region has one of the lowest levels of public expenditure for housing in the nation. New York, Chicago, San Jose, Seattle all beat Los Angeles in spending to provide housing for their work forces.

The region needs better transportation. Yet it seems unable to come up with original ideas about mass transit. And the region faces an air transport crisis because of ostrich-like opposition to airport expansion in Los Angeles, Orange and San Diego counties.

The region needs better education at primary and secondary levels and also in its community colleges. There are jobs going begging, in the newer information industries as well as traditional metalworking, because the region is not training its potential work forces.

Among the less obvious challenges, the Los Angeles area must begin thinking and acting like the great region it is. In a list of the 30 largest metropolitan areas issued at the Global Cities conference, Los Angeles was 10th at 13.5 million people. But even that is understated.

The Los Angeles region, defined by UCLA geographer-economist Allen Scott as extending “from Tijuana to Santa Barbara,” has at least 17 million people and ranks just below Shanghai on the world table.

That kind of population makes it imperative that the counties and communities of Southern California cooperate in developing air transport, rail and road facilities to move people and goods around. Failure to act on a regional basis will only increase today’s frustration and congestion.

The region needs governmental organizations to think beyond today’s fragmented structure, says Fernando Guerra, head of the Center for the Study of Los Angeles at Loyola Marymount University. Because of California’s Progressive history, which distrusted city political machines, “we now have too many independent agencies, school districts, water districts, separate cities,” Guerra says.

At the same time, the region needs more local government, says Janet Abu-Lughod, scholar and author of a new book, “New York, Chicago, Los Angeles: America’s Global Cities.” “The Los Angeles region needs something like New York’s boroughs to counter efforts to split it up further,” says Abu-Lughod, referring to the San Fernando Valley’s separatist threat.

The aim of scholars who think about government is to improve regional decision-making because today’s fragmentation is leading to not-in-my-backyard opposition to development.

Such denial is not an option. There are projects worth $13.6 billion now rushing to completion in Southern California--from the Alameda Corridor to Disneyland California to the Hollywood-Highland project and expansion of the seaports. All those developments demand changes in infrastructure, so decisions and expenditures have to be made.

Some are working hard to bring the benefits of change. State Sen. Betty Karnett (D-Long Beach) is proposing a bill in Sacramento that would facilitate redevelopment of industrial sites in cities along the route of the Alameda Corridor.

The information industries are reaching critical mass in the Los Angeles region, as investment flows in--entrepreneurs Jake Winebaum, late of Disney, and Sky Dayton of EarthLink attracted $130 million to their new ECompanies venture fund.

As new industries converge with the region’s entertainment, software and biomedical industries, job openings multiply.

And jobs are changing. In the traditional garment trades, design, preparation and marketing work is replacing cut-and-sew manufacturing--further increasing demand for skilled employees.

That can spell opportunity for schools at all levels in Southern California to improve the lives of their students.

The outlook for the region’s multitude of universities and colleges is “dynamic because of the global economy,” says Ted Mitchell, the new president of Occidental College.

Finally, the size and complexity of the Los Angeles region ties all those problems and the opportunities together and gives them a larger dimension.

Entrepreneurs spoke of it last week. David Bohnett, founder of GeoCities, which he sold this year to Yahoo, sees opportunities to be involved in community work because there is “such a large and diverse community here.”

And Scott Mednick, co-chairman of Xceed, a Studio City Internet service company and an organizer of the Inner City Games for poor kids, noted that “this is not a desert where you have to build everything new. This is Los Angeles, a place with a history and a presence. There is a lot to build on here.”

Capital of the 21st century? First, there’s work to do.

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James Flanigan can be reached by e-mail at jim.flanigan@latimes.com.