Los Angeles

Once widely seen in the media as “the next great transit city”, the Los Angeles area’s rapid transit boom was turning to a bust — and well before the Covid19 crisis. As we can see below, transit ridership in greater Los Angeles, the nation’s densest urban region, has been declining for years, and things are not likely to get much better with the impact of the pandemic.  read more »

The latest US Census Bureau metropolitan area population estimates (for 2019) were largely lost in the coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic.  read more »

“Small-scale commercial production is, every moment of every day, giving birth spontaneously to capitalism and the bourgeoisie…wherever there is small business and freedom of trade, capitalism appears.”— V.I. Lenin  read more »

For nearly a century, Los Angeles’ urban form has infuriated urbanists who prefer a more concentrated model built around a single central core.

Yet, in the COVID-19 pandemic, our much-maligned dispersed urban pattern has proven a major asset. Los Angeles and its surrounding suburbs have had a considerable number of cases, but overall this highly diverse, globally engaged region has managed to keep rates of infection well below that of dense, transit-dependent New York City.  read more »

California has, at least to date, escaped the worst effects of Covid-19.  read more »

A week ago, I posted Early Observations on the Pandemic and Population Density, which suggested that the more worrying experience with the COVID-19 virus in the New York City metropolitan area could result from more intense person-to-person contacts:  read more »

In Los Angeles County, the nation’s most populous and core of the nation’s most densely populated urban area, transit commuting is dropping fastest in areas with the most comprehensive transit service. This is illustrated by an examination of the 5-year trend from 2008-2012 (middle year 2010) to 2013-2017 (middle year 2015) for Public Use Microdata Areas (PUMAs).  read more »

This past week, in most states, America’s liberal party voted for a doddering, but non-threatening old man, rejecting a strident socialist from Vermont. But second thoughts about socialism appear not to be on the agenda for California’s Democrats, who almost single-handedly kept Bernie Sanders’ anti-capitalist crusade from an untimely implosion.  read more »

In a year when two boosters of the “luxury city,” Donald Trump and Michael Bloomberg, are vying to run the whole country, the very model that created their “success” is slowly unraveling. After roughly 20 years of big-city progress, measured by economic growth and demographic progress, the dense urban centers, including New York, are again teetering on the brink of decline.  read more »

Frank Gehry doesn’t have any particular penchant for the concrete that lines the LA River. The world-class architect and designer does, however, bring a practical appreciation for the purpose of that concrete: It’s the stuff that provides flood control for homes and businesses along an 11-mile stretch through the heart of LA that would otherwise stand to be inundated in particularly heavy rains.  read more »