“From the Beginning, California promised much. While yet barely a name on the map, it entered American awareness as a symbol of renewal. It was a final frontier: of geography and of expectation.”
— Kevin Starr, “Americans and the California Dream, 1850-1915” (1973) read more »
Los Angeles
California Jobs: A Multi-Dimensional Problem
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California 2022: 400,000 Leave, Yolo County Grows the Most
California continues to lose population, according to the latest State Department of Finance estimates for the year ended July 2022. read more »
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California: Most Urban and Densest Urban State
The 2020 Census reveals California to have both the highest urban population density and the highest urbanization share of total population among the states. read more »
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How the California Dream Became a Nighmare
For Americans, California once looked like the future. It was a state defined by risk-taking and utopian dreaming. Yet for most Californians today, the upward mobility so central to the state’s ethos is rapidly disappearing. read more »
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West Coast Blues
Few regions have been more consistently Democratic than the West Coast. Even compared with the Northeast, where Republicans occasionally win governors’ offices, the appropriately named “left coast” has been adamantine in its progressivism. Republicans haven’t won statewide office in California in years; in Oregon, it’s decades. Washington has elected a Republican secretary of state, but she now serves in the Biden administration. And the region’s major cities are overwhelmingly blue. read more »
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Housing Affordability in California: Part 2 — Urban Land Markets
Harvard’s William Alonso showed that the value of residential land tends to increase from the rural uses on the urban fringe1 to centers of economic activity, such as central business districts.2 read more »
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The California Headquarters Exodus Continues
A new Hoover Institution (Stanford University) report indicates that California continues to shed corporate headquarters locations to other states. read more »
Housing Affordability in California: Part 1 — The Situation
There is probably no issue more requiring resolution in California than poor housing affordability. It is a threat to the preservation of the middle-class and the competitiveness of the state. read more »
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Pandemic Reversal?
A recent article in the San Jose Mercury-News reports that transit ridership in “car crazy” Los Angeles has exceeded ridership in the “transit mecca” of the San Francisco Bay Area, a “reversal that could remake California’s mass transit landscape.” This would be a lot more interesting if the writer hadn’t done the arithmetic wrong. read more »
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The Fall of Los Angeles
For much of the 20th century, Los Angeles symbolised the future. Over the course of the century, the population grew 40-fold to nearly four million people. read more »
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