Los Angeles

Preliminary county population estimates just released by the state Department of Finance show that California’s population decline is persisting and accelerating. The state lost 173,000 residents over the year ending July 1, 2021. The Department of Finance reports that there were 56,500 Covid related deaths over the same period, which would account for about one-third of the population loss. Net domestic migration dropped to the lowest rate in a decade, down 277,000 --- more than the population of Marin County.  read more »

To gain more press time, California Governor Newsom just announced California moves to ban oil wells within 3,200 feet of homes and schools. Governor Newsom is proud of continuing the decline of in-state oil production that’s been going on for more than 30 years.  read more »

“I just took [my son] to our local Walgreens to buy him a toy. While there, a man shoved past me so firmly that he sent me into the shelving. Then he proceeded to fill a brown paper bag with Halloween candy and waltzed out of the store. This is one of five Walgreens stores in SF that will be closing in the next two months, in part because of rampant theft. And our city leaders all keep insisting crime is down.”

San Fransicko: Why Progressives Ruin Cities, by Michael Shellenberger  read more »

Sacramento politicians and the urban growth lobby they so diligently serve have created a narrative that there is something very wrong with living in (or wanting to live in) a single-family neighborhood. Single-family neighborhoods are -- so the narrative goes -- “racist,” “immoral,” and “evil.”  read more »

For a generation, the Long Beach and Los Angeles harbors in California handled more than 40 percent of all container cargo headed into the US and epitomized the power of a globalizing economy.  read more »

Survival of the City: Living and Thriving in an Age of Isolation, by Harvard University economists Edward Glaeser and David Cutler characterizes the pandemic as a serious “existential threat to the urban world, because the human proximity that enables contagion is the defining characteristic of the city”  read more »

In California we pride ourselves on being very tolerant of a diverse array of lifestyles and lifestyle choices. Dress how it suits you; love whom you love; define yourself in accordance with your own preferences. Do your own thing. Sing your own song. Dance your own dance. The Californian thing is to live and let live.  read more »

For the first six months of 2021, the number of companies relocating their headquarters out of California is running at twice the rate of recent years and is showing no signs of slowing, according to a study issued today by Spectrum Location Solutions and the Hoover Institution.

The research provides the most detailed and comprehensive data on relocations of California business headquarters from 2018 to the first half of 2021, documenting that departures during the first half of this year are double the rate for each of the three previous years.  read more »

President Joe Biden has nominated Los Angeles mayor Eric Garcetti as ambassador to India. Assuming the Senate confirms him, Garcetti, who would leave office early (his second term ends in December 2022), might find India familiar in certain respects. Like Mumbai or Delhi, Los Angeles now has massive homeless encampments throughout the city  read more »

America’s cities face an existential crisis that threatens their future status as centers of culture, politics, and the economy. Many urban advocates continue to delude themselves that U.S. cities are about to experience a massive post-pandemic return to “normal.” But the disruptive technological, demographic, and social changes of recent times are more likely to upend the old geographic hierarchy than to revive it.  read more »