Los Angeles

Against the Current on LA River—When Will ‘Progressives’ Learn to Listen?

Jerry Sullivan — Wed, 05 Feb 2020 20:29:01 -0500

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.

Gehry’s appreciation is founded on the work of the experts of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, whose experience and research have determined that removing the concrete would leave thousands of those homes and businesses at such risk, as you can see here.

The Corps of Engineers is the definitive expert on matters of the LA River, and its baseline finding runs counter to the fondest hopes of various self-described “progressives”—a cadre of local politicians, environmentalists and would-be developers who want to tear out the concrete to re-make the river’s course through the City of Los Angeles into a center of natural habitat for flora and fauna and recreation.

Look carefully at reports on the $1 billion-plus plan for the river and you’ll notice what seem to be some understated concessions to the risks pointed out by the Corps of Engineers. But even a close examination of recent comments and coverage from public officials, federal agencies, and the local legacy media will yield little more than an unclear picture of whether the so-called progressives have actually accounted for reality as they proceed with plans for the waterway.

Old-School, Current Views

Gehry strikes me as a progressive of the old-school, more Studs Terkel than Ezra Klein—and you can Google either one of those fellows if you’re not familiar.

His expansive intellect, in any case, is grounded by a pragmatism that came early—he changed his name to Gehry from Goldberg for professional purposes in the face of anti-Semitism. Not a pleasant choice, but a pragmatic move to deal squarely with the reality of the world he set out to engage when he graduated from USC in the 1950s.

Gehry applied his hard-earned pragmatism to the reality of the LA River on a recent afternoon at his Playa Vista office, which manages to be roomy with welcome and cramped with ideas all at once. He hit upon the river in a comprehensive response to a single question: What determines the best use of land?

Sullivan, Gehry at architect’s office in Playa Vista

Gehry excused himself from the politics of land-use—that is typically addressed before he enters the picture on any given project, he explained. Then he transcended politics, pointing to the river as an example where any such man-made calculus runs the risk of being swept away by nature.

That’s because the river has a natural place and a longstanding purpose, Gehry noted.

Its place might seem obvious, but it’s also subject to shape-shifting. What is a thin sliver of water the majority of the time can turn into a voluminous gusher during periods of heavy rain or fast snow melt.

That leads to the purpose of the concrete-lined river in today’s reality: flood control.

LA’s growth long ago brought development close to the river—mostly industrial enterprises and relatively low-cost housing that stood to be inundated during gushers. That natural fact was addressed in the middle of the last century, when the LA River got a concrete makeover for its 51-mile route from the confluence of Bell Creek and Arroyo Calabasas in the San Fernando Valley to the Pacific Ocean. The smooth, hard walls and floor provided a way for a smaller amount of the river’s space to see to its purpose, allowing more water to pass neighborhoods without jumping the banks and flooding them.

Reality Check

Those same smooth, hard walls and floor also turned a thing of natural diversity and beauty into a man-made monolith that looks mean in comparison.

Indeed, Gehry would prefer to see the river returned to its natural state based on aesthetics alone. He spent a lot of time on designs that would complement such a transformation.

Then he read the Corp of Engineers report, double-checked it with data from the City of LA’s Bureau of Engineering and observations of his own, and swallowed the reality of the situation. The same Gehry who knew he couldn’t wish away anti-Semitism has determined that the hopes of returning the LA River to its natural state aren’t grounded in reality.

LA City Bureau of Engineering projection of 100-year flood in Frogtown neighborhood, also known as Elysian Valley

Gehry went on record with his reckoning when he told a gathering of the Urban Land Institute that the plan for the 11 miles of the river that courses through LA’s city limits—especially a three-mile stretch that passes Griffith Park and the Frogtown neighborhood that’s more recently been promoted as Elysian Valley—won’t be realized because it’s too risky. Remove the concrete and the spread of the river during heavy floods will wreak havoc.

He made the remarks more than two years ago in front of an audience gathered to hear him engage questions from Frances Anderton, host of a design and architecture program on public radio station KCRW/89.9 FM.

It’s difficult to find any coverage of the architect’s comments to Anderton besides a brief piece by Antonio Pacheco of The Architect's Newspaper. It seems that not even Anderton reported Gehry’s contention—which also appears to have been glossed over by subsequent reports from the LA Times and just about every other media outlet that’s covered the LA River since.

Transformer

It’s especially notable, in this context, that Gehry doesn’t dismiss the potential for societies to transform themselves or reverse man-made circumstances. See how the Guggenheim Museum he designed in Bilbao got the city beyond the Spanish rust belt and into a niche of Europe’s creative economy. Or consider the role the Gehry-designed Walt Disney Concert Hall has played in the re-evaluation of Downtown Los Angeles over the past 20 years.

It’s equally notable that Gehry remains involved in plans for the LA River, and that his efforts reflect his view that a full return to its natural state is not an option. These days he’s working on a residential and commercial development where Downtown’s industrial edge meets Little Tokyo. The idea calls for residential components to accommodate various income levels with a big open space amid it all. The open space could serve as parkland most of the time and become a reservoir to capture diverted river water for local use for a month or so each year as needed based on rains.

Gehry also is working on a prototype for a park that would be built on a platform over the river as it passes through the City of South Gate, a few miles to the south. The long, narrow park would provide the open space to a community in need while allowing the river to proceed with its job of flood control, sending gushers along quickly to prevent flooding.

Concrete Ideas

Some knock Gehry’s plan in South Gate for adding more concrete, a material that has been made synonymous with ugliness when it comes to press coverage of the river.
Gehry sees a concrete pad over the river as a way to provide open spaces for neighborhoods in dire need of them—his research has shown that life expectancies in the working-class neighborhoods along the LA River between Downtown and the ocean are well below average, with a lack of open space a likely contributor.

I remind all that concrete doesn’t necessarily have to be ugly—especially not in the hands of a creative force such as Gehry.

I lived as a child in Bilbao when it was a steel town that had a solid base for its economy and a ruddy industrial charm.

The reality of the world eroded both the economic base and the charm that industry had provided.

Guggenheim in Bilbao: world-famous edifice, city’s new reputation supported by 7,000 cubic feet of concrete

The Guggenheim Museum that Gehry designed gave Bilbao a new base and different charm. The museum also gave a nod to the city’s industrial history with its 700 tons of steel cladding, a now world-famous structure that’s supported by—of all things—7,000 cubic feet of concrete.

Columnist's View

Somehow the $1 billion-plus LA River plan that one of the world’s foremost authorities on architecture and design has found to be infeasible trots along with pushes from politicians, environmentalists, and legacy media that have yet to present a clear picture on how the realities—the risks—cited by the Corps of Engineers will be addressed.

And somehow Gehry’s plans to address those same realities and bring transformative change in land-use in the heart of LA—and his ambitious effort to bring parkland to the working-class bastion of South Gate—get little amplification from the politicians or environmentalists or legacy media.

Gehry hasn’t told the so-called progressives what they want to hear—but everything from his credentials to his intellect indicates that he’s told them the truth.

The truth can be ignored—for a while—but it can’t be wished away.

The self-declared progressives would do well to concede that point in regard to the LA River—and also understand that their preachy and impractically wishful larger agenda is as much a part of America’s increasingly toxic culture as the worst impulses of their opponents in the political arena.

All of SoCal would be better off if everyone who likes to quote Gehry actually listened to him when it comes to the LA River.

Jerry Sullivan is the founder and chief columnist of SullivanSaysSoCal.com
Follow him on Twitter @SullivanSaysSC

California's Low-wage Jobs Crisis

Joel Kotkin and Marshall Toplansky — Mon, 23 Dec 2019 21:54:05 -0500

Media, the political class and policy wonks have identified the “housing crisis” as California’s existential challenge.

Yet, in reality, more critical may be a “jobs crisis” that is condemning ever more Californians to permanent low-wage purgatory.

Viewed in aggregate, California employment growth in the past decade has outperformed the rest of the country, although the state lags its prime competitors Utah, Florida, Texas, Colorado, Nevada. In more recent years the state has remained ahead of the national average, although clearly losing momentum.

This is what many boosters see as proof of the “vibrant” economy. But look closer at the quality of jobs being created. Despite the surge of high-wage employment in the Bay Area, the state has created five times the number of low as opposed to high wage jobs.

Rather than a beacon for high wage employment, California has created fewer high-paying positions than the national average, and far fewer than prime competitors like Salt Lake City, Seattle or Austin. The convergence of low wages and ever higher housing prices constitute the real “crisis” facing the state.

Since 2000 home prices across Southern California, including the Inland Empire, have grown at roughly twice the rate of income. The new California dream may be working three jobs and never being able to afford a home of your own.

California’s not so good new economy

The changing nature of the state’s economy does much to explain this disappointing pattern. From the end of the Second World War to the 1990s, California developed a very diverse economy, spanning from entertainment and aerospace to all kinds of manufacturing, agriculture and energy. Except for agriculture, all created many middle-wage jobs.

But with the end of the Cold War, the introduction of ever-stricter environment regulations and among the nation’s highest taxes, many middle-class jobs have disappeared. Such above-average paying jobs have dropped 51 percent in the past decade, among the highest rates in the country.

Many firms that traditionally employed mid-skilled blue- and white-collar workers — Parsons, Bechtel, Occidental Petroleum, Toyota, Mitsubishi, Nissan, Schwab and McKesson, Lockheed Northrup — have either left the state or dramatically lowered their headcounts.

Instead, the state economy has become increasingly dominated by the tech sector, which now accounts for more than half its largest firms. These firms may enjoy enormous profits, but employ relatively few workers, particularly outside the Bay Area. Southern California, with a few exceptions, has not been invited to the party. Although the Los Angeles MSA boasts the second largest number of new engineering graduates, for its size, there should be more STEM jobs here. The L.A. area ranks only 116th on a percentage of tech jobs relative to all jobs in the area. By contrast, Silicon Valley ranks No. 1 and San Francisco No. 3 in the nation on percentage of employment in STEM occupations.

Particularly hard-hit has been the industrial sector, which, notes business relocation expert Joe Vranich, is particularly vulnerable to high energy prices: since 2011 electricity prices have increased five times as fast as the national average. No surprise that the country’s post-recession industrial renaissance has barely touched California. Over the decade California has fallen to the bottom half of states; last year it ranked 44th, with a rate of growth one-third to one quarter that of prime competitors such as Texas, Virginia, Arizona, Nevada and Florida.

Growing regional disparities

The current regulatory regime particularly hits both the poorer parts of urban California and the interior, areas traditionally reliant on basic industries such as agriculture, logistics, and manufacturing. Even as these areas are growing their populations — including millennials — far faster than the unaffordable coast, they must commute elsewhere for middle-class jobs.

Take the Inland Empire. The region created as many jobs per capita as Silicon Valley but mostly in low-wage fields like hospitality, health care and logistics. The result: the Inland Empire suffers the lowest average pay of any of the nation’s 50 largest regions.

The picture may be even worse in the Central Valley, where new groundwater regulations as well as high energy prices threaten its largest industry, agriculture. The Farm Bureau suggests as much as one in three acres could be lost. Particularly in the crosshairs is Kern County, which has one of the nation’s strongest ag industries, and is also as the capital of California’s oil industry, now slated by the governor for extinction. This will cost the area 14,000 generally high-paid jobs even as the state continues to import much of its oil from the Middle East.

Will tech leave too?

As its basic industries struggle, California is becoming an economic colony of the tech oligarchs. Their enormous wealth has served to mask the state’s economic challenges and provided the wherewithal for an ever-increasing welfare and subsidy regime.

Can the party continue? Those parts of the state where the tech headquarters are located — the Bay Area and San Diego — have done well, but Los Angeles, notes a recent Brookings study, has actually lost tech jobs over the decade. Generally, any part of the state that lacks large high-tech headquarters is likely to be ignored. Whether this pattern will persist is uncertain particularly if valuations, as for many recent IPOs and the mega-unicorns continue to drop.

Clearly some new state rules, particularly from Assembly Bill 5, concerning contract labor are a direct threat to tech firms, not only Uber and Lyft but to companies that subcontract services from smaller companies and individuals. Higher-income and other taxes now being proposed will certainly hit the tech workforce. Some firms have already started shifting employment to other states, notably Texas, Tennessee, Nevada, Colorado and Arizona.

In fact, according to estimates by EMSI, several states — Idaho, Tennessee, Washington and Utah — are now growing their tech employment faster than California. The state is also losing its mojo on professional and technical services, the largest high-wage sector, and now stands roughly in the middle of pack, well behind its major competitors like Nevada, Utah, Colorado, Texas, Tennessee and Florida.

If these job opportunities continue to ebb, California will lose its appeal to a new generation of wealth creators. The proverbial land of the future could morph into an island of inertia. California leads the nation in long-term owners who often owe little on their houses, so they may hang around. It’s the next generation that’s most at risk, and if their incomes continue to lag, there is no way they can hope to secure affordable housing.

Needed: a new strategy

California’s economy has always been driven by newcomers. But increasingly people and companies outside the charmed circle of venture capital-funded firms are leaving. Between 2014 and 2018, notes demographer Wendell Cox, net domestic out-migration has grown from 46,000 to 156,000, with an increasing share of younger people, particularly those in family-formation years.

Yet what has been created by misguided policy can be reversed with intelligent alternatives. If we wish to restore middle-class white collar and high-paying blue-collar jobs, we need to consider economic impact as well as the effectiveness of environmental regulations.

The threat from climate change is undeniably here, but essentially returning California to pre-industrial society, dependent on the largesse of a handful of tech companies, seems self-defeating and profoundly feudal. The state needs to apply our legendary innovative skills to address greenhouse gas emissions in ways that don’t also eviscerate middle- and working-class incomes.

There are a host of options including taking another look at nuclear power, renewable/recaptured natural gas, expanding hydro-electric capacity, dispersing work closer to where people can afford to live, encouraging work at home and changing regulations to exempt outlying areas from the most draconian regulations.

If we don’t change course, many California will have to say goodbye to future good jobs and social mobility for our children, unless, of course, they choose to live elsewhere.

Joel Kotkin is the R.C. Hobbs Presidential Fellow in Urban Futures at Chapman University in Orange and executive director of the Houston-based Center for Opportunity Urbanism (www.opportunityurbanism.org). Marshall Toplansky is clinical assistant professor of Management Science, research fellow, C. Larry Hoag Center for Real Estate, Argyros School of Business and Economics, Chapman University.

This piece first appeared on The Orange County Register.

Photo credit: USACE via Flickr under CC 2.0 License.

California Preening: Golden State on Path to High-Tech Feudalism

Joel Kotkin — Fri, 20 Dec 2019 21:06:47 -0500

“We are the modern equivalent of the ancient city-states of Athens and Sparta. California has the ideas of Athens and the power of Sparta,” declared then-governor Arnold Schwarzenegger in 2007. “Not only can we lead California into the future . . . we can show the nation and the world how to get there.” When a movie star who once played Hercules says so who’s to disagree? The idea of California as a model, of course, precedes the former governor’s tenure. Now the state’s anti-Trump resistance—in its zeal on matters concerning climate, technology, gender, or race—believes that it knows how to create a just, affluent, and enlightened society. “The future depends on us,” Governor Gavin Newsom said at his inauguration. “And we will seize this moment.”

In truth, the Golden State is becoming a semi-feudal kingdom, with the nation’s widest gap between middle and upper incomes—72 percent, compared with the U.S. average of 57 percent—and its highest poverty rate. Roughly half of America’s homeless live in Los Angeles or San Francisco, which now has the highest property crime rate among major cities. California hasn’t yet become a full-scale dystopia, of course, but it’s heading in a troubling direction.

This didn’t have to happen. No place on earth has more going for it than the Golden State. Unlike the East Coast and Midwest, California benefited from comparatively late industrialization, with an economy based less on auto manufacturing and steel than on science-based fields like aerospace, software, and semiconductors. In the mid-twentieth century, the state also gained from the best aspects of progressive rule, culminating in an elite public university system, a massive water system reminiscent of the Roman Empire, and a vast infrastructure network of highways, ports, and bridges. The state was fortunate, too, in drawing people from around the U.S. and the world. The eighteenth-century French traveler J. Hector St. John de Crèvecœur described the American as “this new man,” and California—innovative, independent, and less bound by tradition or old prejudice—reflected that insight. Though remnants of this California still exist, its population is aging, less mobile, and more pessimistic, and its roads, schools, and universities are in decline.

In the second half of the twentieth century, California’s remarkably diverse economy spread prosperity from the coast into the state’s inland regions. Though pockets of severe poverty existed—urban barrios, south Los Angeles, the rural Central Valley—they were limited in scope. In fact, growth often favored suburban and exurban communities, where middle-class families, including minorities, settled after World War II.

In the last two decades, the state has adopted policies that undermine the basis for middle-class growth. State energy policies, for example, have made California’s gas and electricity prices among the steepest in the country. Since 2011, electricity prices have risen five times faster than the national average. Meantime, strict land-use controls have raised housing costs to the nation’s highest, while taxes—once average, considering California’s urban scale—now exceed those of virtually every state. At the same time, California’s economy has shed industrial diversity in favor of dependence on one industry: Big Tech. Just a decade before, the state’s largest firms included those in the aerospace, finance, energy, and service industries. Today’s 11 largest companies hail from the tech sector, while energy firms—excluding Chevron, which has moved much of its operations to Houston—have disappeared. Not a single top aerospace firm—the iconic industry of twentieth-century California—retains its headquarters here.

Though lionized in the press, this tech-oriented economy hasn’t resulted in that many middle- and high-paying job opportunities for Californians, particularly outside the Bay Area. Since 2008, notes Chapman University’s Marshall Toplansky, the state has created five times the number of low-paying, as opposed to high-wage, jobs. A remarkable 86 percent of new jobs paid below the median income, while almost half paid under $40,000. Moreover, California, including Silicon Valley, created fewer high-paying positions than the national average, and far less than prime competitors like Salt Lake City, Seattle, or Austin. Los Angeles County features the lowest pay of any of the nation’s 50 largest counties.

No state advertises its multicultural bona fides more than California, now a majority-minority state. This is evident at the University of California, where professors are required to prove their service to “people of color,” to the state’s high school curricula, with its new ethnic studies component. Much of California’s anti-Trump resistance has a racial context. State Attorney General Xavier Becerra has sued the administration numerous times over immigration policy while he helps ensure California’s distinction as a sanctuary for illegal immigrants. So far, more than 1 million illegal residents have received driver’s licenses, and they qualify for free health care, too. San Francisco now permits illegal immigrants to vote in local elections.

Such radical policies may make progressives feel better about themselves, though they seem less concerned about how these actions affect everyday people. California’s Latinos and African-Americans have seen good blue-collar jobs in manufacturing and energy vanish. According to one United Way study, over half of Latino households can barely pay their bills. “For Latinos,” notes long-time political consultant Mike Madrid, “the California Dream is becoming an unattainable fantasy.”

In the past, poorer Californians could count on education to help them move up. But today’s educators appear more interested in political indoctrination than results. Among the 50 states, California ranked 49th in the performance of low-income students. In wealthy San Francisco, test scores for black students are the worst of any California county. Many minority residents, especially African-Americans, are fleeing the state. In a recent UC Berkeley poll, 58 percent of black expressed interest in leaving California, a higher percentage than for any racial group, though approximately 45 percent of Asians and Latinos also considered moving out.

Perhaps the biggest demographic disaster is generational. For decades, California incubated youth culture, creating trends like beatniks, hippies, surfers, and Latino and Asian art, music, and cuisine. The state is a fountainhead of youthful wokeness and rebellion, but that may prove short-lived as millennials leave. From 2014 to 2018, notes demographer Wendell Cox, net domestic out-migration grew from 46,000 to 156,000. The exiles are increasingly in their family-formation years. In the 2010s, California suffered higher net declines in virtually every age category under 54, with the biggest rate of loss coming among the 35-to-44 cohort.

As families with children leave, and international migration slows to one-third of Texas’s level, the remaining population is rapidly aging. Since 2010, California’s fertility rate has dropped 60 percent, more than the national average; the state is now aging 50 percent more rapidly than the rest of the country. A growing number of tech firms and millennials have headed to the Intermountain West. Low rates of homeownership among younger people play a big role in this trend, with California millennials forced to rent, with little chance of buying their own home, while many of the state’s biggest metros lead the nation in long-term owners. California is increasingly a greying refuge for those who bought property when housing was affordable.

Read the rest of the piece at City Journal.

Joel Kotkin is the Presidential Fellow in Urban Futures at Chapman University and Executive Director for the Center for Opportunity Urbanism. His last book was The Human City: Urbanism for the Rest of Us (Agate, 2017). His next book, The Coming of Neo-Feudalism: A Warning to the Global Middle Class, is now available to preorder. You can follow him on Twitter @joelkotkin

Photo credit: Charlie Nguyen via Flickr under CC 2.0 License.

Revealed Preferences: The 30-Minute Commute

Wendell Cox — Thu, 19 Dec 2019 20:29:58 -0500

The principal reason that large cities have developed is that they provide large labor (and housing) markets. A labor market is also a housing market, since virtually all who work in the metropolitan area also live there. The metropolitan area is the one location where there is one-to-one balance between jobs and resident workers (see: Alain Bertaud, Order Without Design: How Markets Shape Cities). Labor markets are independent of jurisdictional boundaries (municipality, county, or state), except where international boundaries restrict freedom of labor movement.

Obviously, large labor markets require transportation that permits residents to reach the maximum of jobs in a reasonable period of time (such as 30 minutes, which has historical significance, indicated below). Researchers such as Remy Prud’homme, Chang-Won Lee, David Hartgen, Gregory Fields and Steve Polzin have shown that a metropolitan area is likely to have better economic performance and job creation if a larger number of jobs can be reached by the average worker in a specified period. With the relatively recent development of transportation access measures, the 30-minute one – way work trip (commute) has emerged as an important planning standard (referred to herein as “30-minute commutes”).

Marchetti’s Constant

The 30-minute one-way work trip travel time has been called the Marchetti Constant, described by Italian physicist Cesare Marchetti. Jonathan English, writing in City Lab, provides a compelling history from 800 BCE to today. The concept has also been dealt with in newgeography.com articles here and here.

This article examines 30-minute one – way actual commutes shares by the two leading modes of travel to work, autos and transit, in the 53 major US metropolitan areas (over 1 million population). This excludes working at home, which has recently passed transit as the second largest employment access mode).

Rational Choices

One of the enduring myths embraced by many in the media and planning agencies is that people can readily switch from driving to transit without great inconvenience and much elongated travel time. In fact, for most people in major metropolitan areas, transit is not a reasonable choice. It may be too remote from their residence, too remote from their employment or just take too long. For these, choosing transit requires either not working or working in a less remunerative job, both of which mean a lower standard of living.

In fact, however, relatively few people have a reasonable choice between autos and transit. The work trip access data developed by the University of Minnesota Accessibility Laboratory indicates that the average worker can reach 56 times as many jobs in 30 minutes by car as by transit in 49 metropolitan areas over 1,000,000 population. Just to make it clear, this is 5,600% as many jobs, not 56% more jobs.

The reality, according to the 2017 American Community Survey is that 56.8% of major metropolitan area commuters reach their jobs in 30 minutes by auto, compared to only 0.9% by transit.These are “revealed preference” data, because they reflect the modes of transport used by people based upon the choices that they face (such as economic, access, and other considerations).

Grand Rapids: Where Auto Commuting is Best: The top 10 major metropolitan areas with auto commutes of 30-minute auto or less are illustrated in Figure 1. Grand Rapids tops the list, where and nearly 73 percent of the metropolitan areas commuters reach their jobs by car within 30-minutes. Grand Rapids is one of the smaller major metropolitan areas and is characterized by relatively low urban population density. Rochester, Buffalo, Oklahoma City and Salt Lake City round out the five top major metropolitan areas where workers are reaching their jobs within 30-minutes. With the exception of Salt Lake City, these all have lower than average urban population densities.

Among the major metropolitan areas where 30-minute automobile commuting is the greatest, commuting by transit is minuscule. For example, in Grand Rapids only 0.5 percent of commuters reach their jobs within 30 minutes by transit. Oklahoma City has by far the lowest 30-minute transit share, which rounds to 0.0 percent.

New York: Where Transit Commuting is Best: The top 10 major metropolitan areas in 30-minute transit commuting is, as is to be expected, New York. In the New York metropolitan area, 3.8 percent of traveling commuters reach their jobs by transit in less than 30 minutes. The San Francisco is second, at 2.7 percent, more than one quarter lower than New York. In five other areas, transit commuters are reaching 2.0 percent or more of the metropolitan jobs in less than 30 minutes . (Figure 2). These include Boston, Washington, Philadelphia, Seattle and Chicago. Each of these top seven major metropolitan areas includes a transit legacy city (municipality), except for Seattle.

30 - Minute Commuting by Auto Compared to Transit: Overall, 61 times as many commuters reach their jobs by auto as by transit in the nation’s major metropolitan areas. As is evident from above, there are many more less than 30-minute commutes reachable by auto than transit in every major metropolitan area. In New York, commuters are reach 8 times as many jobs in 30 minutes as by transit. The same seven metropolitan areas that have the highest percentage of 30-minute commuters by transit also have the best transit performance relative to autos (Figure 3). Auto commuters do the best, by comparison, in Philadelphia, as 23 times as many reaching their jobs in 30 minutes as by transit. This is nothing to celebrate. Put in different terms, there are 800 percent as many 30-minute auto commuters in New York as transit, and 2,300 percent as many in Philadelphia.

30 - Minute Commute Advantage by Population Category

Overall, 57.7% of commuters who travel to work are able to reach their jobs in 30 minutes in the major metropolitan areas by auto or transit. The other 42.3% require longer to get to their jobs (Figure 4). If working at home and the other modes are included, 63.5% of US commuters access work in less than 30 minutes. Approximately six times as many access their jobs by working at home, than by transit. Further, there are even more 30-minute commutes by walking and other means (Figure 5).

The percentage of less than 30 minute commutes is generally higher among the smaller metropolitan areas, ranging from 45.9% in the largest to 64.9% in the smallest (Figure 6). A number of factors are likely to contribute slower travel times in the larger metropolitan areas, such as greater congestion in the generally larger urban cores, the generally higher urban population densities and the slower travel times of transit, with the notable exception of Atlanta (Figure 8, below). The Atlanta exception was dealt with in reports by Alan Pisarksi and me and in a previous report.

In the 7.5 million and over category, the 30-minute commute share is highest in Los Angeles and lowest in New York (Figure 7).

Among those in the 5.0 to 7.5 million category, Dallas-Fort Worth has the highest 30-minute commute share, and Washington the lowest (Figure 8). Dallas-Fort Worth has been rated as having the least congestion among any world urban area over 5 million for which there is data.

In the 3.5 to 5.0 million category (Figure 9), Detroit has the highest share of 30-minute commuters and San Francisco the lowest (Figure 10).

Among those with from 2 to 2.5 million (Figure 11), the highest is Kansas City and the lowest Portland (OR-WA). Oklahoma City has the highest 30-minute commute share in the 1.25 to 2.0 million category, while San Jose has the lowest (Figure 12). In the smallest population category (1.0 to 1.25 million), Grand Rapids is the highest, while Birmingham is the lowest (Figure 13).

Of Comprehensive Mobility and Niche Mobility

The huge imbalance between auto and transit commuting, even in New York with by far the best transit system in the nation indicates a huge difference , for most people, between autos and transit. Conservatoire National des Arts et Metiers Professor Jean-Claude Ziv on what would be required to provide the geographical coverage of autos by transit in 16 world megacities, including New York and Los Angeles (see: Megacities and Affluence); it would require minimum annual expenditures about equal to the total public spending by all levels of government in the United States. We did not estimate the cost of providing equal access in terms of time, which would have made the cost even greater.

In a world where economic growth, affluence and poverty reduction depends on efficient labor markets, truly transit competitive with autos is virtually impossible (whether New York, Cairo or Shanghai). At the same time, transit plays a very important niche role in providing a majority of employment mobility to the largest downtown areas (central business districts), such as Manhattan, Brooklyn, Chicago, San Francisco and Jersey City’s Exchange place (also an “edge city”), as well as many similar districts outside the United States (such as Hong Kong, Shanghai, Toronto, Paris, and London. In essence, “transit is about downtown.” It’s time that urban plans are based on this reality.

Photograph: Downtown Brooklyn (bottom of pictured), Manhattan (across the East River) and Exchange Place, Jersey City (across the Hudson River), three of the six US employment centers with more than 50% transit market shares (by author). (by author)

Wendell Cox is principal of Demographia, an international public policy and demographics firm. He is a Senior Fellow of the Center for Opportunity Urbanism (US), Senior Fellow for Housing Affordability and Municipal Policy for the Frontier Centre for Public Policy (Canada), and a member of the Board of Advisors of the Center for Demographics and Policy at Chapman University (California). He is co-author of the "Demographia International Housing Affordability Survey" and author of "Demographia World Urban Areas" and "War on the Dream: How Anti-Sprawl Policy Threatens the Quality of Life." He was appointed by Mayor Tom Bradley to three terms on the Los Angeles County Transportation Commission, where he served with the leading city and county leadership as the only non-elected member. Speaker of the House of Representatives appointed him to the Amtrak Reform Council. He served as a visiting professor at the Conservatoire National des Arts et Metiers, a national university in Paris.

Will Garland-to-Ueberroth-to-Wasserman Work for LA’s Latest Olympian Effort?

Jerry Sullivan — Wed, 13 Nov 2019 20:29:02 -0500

The name sounds like something a screenwriter might contrive – but not even Hollywood would buy a character as unlikely as William May “Billy “Garland.

Maybe that’s why so few of us have heard of Garland despite his role as one of the self-made SoCal aristocrats of the early 20th century who helped define the LA we inhabit today.

There’s a “truth-is-stranger-than-fiction” quality to Garland’s life story – from a New Englander with ailing lungs to omnipresent power broker in the City of Angels.

Or maybe it’s an “only-in-LA” tale.

But Garland did exist, no matter how you slice it, and his tale is worth the telling it gets in a newly published non-fiction narrative from the University of California Press titled “Dreamers and Schemers – How an Improbable Bid for the 1932 Olympics Transformed Los Angeles From Dusty Outpost to Global Metropolis.”

All of this – Garland, his story, the book’s author – stretches across SoCal.

And it comes at an opportune moment, with LA just getting ready to get ready to host another Olympiad.

Start with the author, Barry Siegel, who grew up on the Westside in simpler times and went on to become a Pulitzer Prize-winning writer for the LA Times before founding and running the Literary Journalism program at the University of California-Irvine.

Siegel remains an LA guy even with his UCI credentials. He’s been known to haunt Art’s Deli on Ventura Boulevard in Studio City, and he’s just as comfortable with Factor’s Deli on Pico Boulevard in the Pico Robertson district, not far from where he grew up in the 1950s.

Those were the days when Siegel and his dad regularly made the drive down Exposition Boulevard to the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, where the newly arrived Dodgers played for several years before a neighborhood in Chavez Ravine made way for the team’s own stadium just northwest of Downtown.

Siegel didn’t know then that he’d spend a good chunk of time decades later learning about how the Coliseum came to be. He couldn’t have known that he’d be professionally captivated for a spell by the driving force behind the stadium that opened with capacity for 75,000 fans and grew to accommodate 101,000 at one point.

And how would he have known?

How many of us have spent much time pondering why LA built a gigantic sports palace in 1923, when the city was still three decades away from big league sports and USC had yet to play its first game against Notre Dame?

How many of us wonder why the Coliseum went up nine years before LA put it to its intended use as host of the 1932 Olympics?

The short answer is Billy Garland.

The long answer is given ably by Siegel, who takes readers on a tour of yesteryear’s LA and manages to link the history and characters – those dreamers and schemers – to the present.

The past and the present came together for Siegel thanks indirectly – but nevertheless in large part – to the efforts of Peter Ueberroth, another fellow with ties to LA and OC.

Much of Siegel’s research came courtesy of the archives of the LA 84 Foundation, which was established with the surplus of funds generated by the 1984 Olympics that Ueberroth led in LA.

The LA 84 Foundation is located in the West Adams district in South LA – where Garland lived in one of the many mansions populated by business magnates and Hollywood stars back in the day. The foundation operates a treasure trove of a library and archive alongside programs committed to “radically expanding youth sports opportunities; and improving the social, academic and health outcomes through structured sports participation,” according to its stated mission.

Ueberroth these days runs the Contrarian Group, a venture capital and private equity firm based in Newport Beach, which gives him a perch in the world of commerce – one of a number of similarities to Garland.

Both Garland and Ueberroth led an edition of the Olympic games in Los Angeles as the global movement faced existential threats.

Garland’s 1932 games came as the world grappled in the depths of the Great Depression.

Ueberroth’s turn came amid some diplomatic dog days in 1984, when the games were stuck with some global payback for the U.S.’ move to boycott the preceding Olympiad in Moscow. The Soviet Union commanded more than a dozen satellite states at the time, and it responded with a boycott of its own, putting a crimp in the global turnout of LA’s games.

The Soviet boycott compounded a structural problem in the very concept of staging the global sports festival every four years – the LA games were preceded by a string of financial disasters for Olympic host cities that stretched back 20 years.

Garland managed to pull the games off – and he might have forever changed the equation on promoting LA in the process.

Ueberroth also pulled them off, putting on a show that defied predictions of an international cold shoulder and civic meltdown to revive the Olympic movement, setting a new standard for staging the games.

More common ground for Garland and Ueberroth: Both were self-made entrepreneurs who took on the challenges of the Olympics at the urging of a representative of LA’s institutional power structure.

Harry Chandler, boss of the LA Times and perhaps the ultimate mover and shaker in SoCal’s history, was in Garland’s corner.

Ueberroth took on the challenge at the request of Mayor Tom Bradley, who served in LA’s top elective office longer than anyone in history, bridging the city’s transition from a place where Anglo-Americans kept a tight lid on the good life to an atmosphere that continued the trail toward its remarkable diversity of today.

Both Garland and Ueberroth had to find ways to stage the games without public financing.

Garland worked around the wishes of voters who had voted down a referendum to publicly finance the construction of the Coliseum through bonds – although Siegel illuminates how Garland fixed it so they ultimately bore the risk whether they realized it or not.

Ueberroth lined up with the 80% or so of Angelenos who voted against putting any public money toward 1984 games. He then pioneered corporate sponsorships and other revenue streams that produced the surplus and changed the equation for the Olympic movement.

There also were some key differences between Garland and Ueberroth. Garland was a dreamer and a schemer. So were Chandler, E.L. Doheny and a host of other civic leaders who formed an upper crust of power brokers who took hold of LA in the first half of the 20th century and led – sometimes dragged – the city along a path of steady economic and population growth.

Ueberroth represented a different LA – a city entering a new phase of its history under the helm of a mayor who represented a break from the past.

Ueberroth brought vision and transparency – a refinement of the dreams and schemes of Garland’s age.

The similarities and differences between the two bring to mind the 2028 Olympics, which are slated for LA and raise an obvious question: Who will take the baton from Garland and Ueberroth?

Will they dream and scheme or lean toward vision and transparency?

What tangible assets might the 2028 games leave as a legacy for LA?

Difficult to say for a number of reasons.

Garland and Ueberroth might have been buffeted by events beyond their control – an economic crash and a diplomatic breakdown, respectively – but their institutional partners were steady. Chandler and Bradley provided continuity throughout the runup to the games in both instances.

Garland and Ueberroth both were the clearly designated leaders on their respective Olympian efforts.

The effort to land the 2028 Olympics came under the leadership of current Mayor Eric Garcetti, who will be long out of office by the time planning gets into full gear for those games.

Another key player in landing the 2028 games has been Casey Wasserman, scion of a Hollywood legend, well-known talent agent and studio executive Lew Wasserman.

The younger Wasserman’s professional life is steeped in sports as an agent, one-time franchise owner, and UCLA athletics booster.

Now he’s chairman of the LA 2028 Organizing Committee, putting him next in line after Ueberroth and Garland.

Ueberroth came along in a much different world – and a much different LA – from what Garland wrangled for the 1932 games.

The 2028 games that Wasserman has signed on to lead will take place in a world that’s much different from the atmosphere that surrounded Ueberroth’s games. Indeed, the digital revolution we’re living through means that Wasserman’s games will come in a world and city very much changed from today – let alone 1984 – and it seems unlikely he’ll get the benefit of the sort of continuity Garland and Ueberroth could count on in the form of Chandler and Bradley.

Siegel’s “Dreamers and Schemers” is an entertaining look at the life of a largely forgotten giant of LA’s history in Garland. The book also gives plenty of reason to realize that an Olympiad is a matter of great consequence for a host city – and now is the time to start paying attention to planning for the 2028 games.

Sullivan is founder and chief columnist of SullivanSaysSoCal.com
@SullivanSaysSC

Unsustainable California

Joel Kotkin — Sun, 10 Nov 2019 20:29:01 -0500

The recent rash of fires, like the drought that preceded it, has sparked a new wave of pessimism about the state’s future. But the natural disasters have also obscured the fact the greatest challenge facing the state comes not from burning forests or lack of precipitation but from an increasingly dysfunctional society divided between a small but influential wealthy class and an ever-expanding poverty population.

We are not addressing either the human or natural challenge. Once the ultimate “can do” state, California is morphing into one that is profoundly “can’t do.” Neither right nor left seems to have any program to confront the state’s worsening malaise on issues ranging from housing, education and the economy to the care of the environment.

To be sure, the right is correct to lay some of the blame for fires on green policies that have restricted brush clearance, and have prevented the thinning of the state’s forests, a finding shared by the state’s Little Hoover Commission. But it’s been years since Republicans have been able to present a coherent program — not surprising since vanishingly few in the state listen to, much less follow, the conservative agenda.

For its part, the progressive left controls the debate, the academy, most of the media, but has few answers to the problems plaguing our state. For many, scare-mongering about climate change defines and justifies even the most economically ruinous actions; activists even blame the recent power outages on climate, though the primary cause was lack of investment and maintenance by the state-regulated electrical utility.

Blaming PG&E, President Trump, oil companies, housing developers, car commuters or manufacturers for our problems is no doubt emotionally satisfying to the zealots in Sacramento and their media allies. But despite all this sturm und drang, California’s emissions over the past decade have fallen less than 39 other states and are essentially irrelevant on a global level. Even if the United States adopted the Green New Deal, the impact on climate, notes some recent studies, would be almost infinitesimal. The big emissions increases are almost entirely coming from China and other the less developed countries.

California needs to rediscover its magic

The natural challenges we face are, in fact, not so dissimilar than those in the past. From its inception, California has always been an “unnatural” place for intense urban development. Its lack of water, particularly in the populated parts of the state, long has been an endemic problem; drought and fire a constant theme dating back generations.

The great achievement of the state was to employ innovative engineering solutions that brought massive water supplies from the Sierra range to the water-deficient Bay Area, Southern California and the Central Valley. Elaborate schemes brought electricity and power to the state, sometimes from as far as Utah. Where there was no natural port, one was carved out at San Pedro and Long Beach, now easily the largest entry port in North America.

It’s hard to believe any of this could be done today. Under progressive governors as well as conservative ones, we have done very little to improve our water systems, much less make it more resilient in the face of much feared climate shifts. We talk boldly about going “all electric” but close down emissions-free nuclear plants, shutter efficient gas facilities while refusing to expand hydro-electric systems. No state imports so much of its energy, notably from the enlightened nation of Saudi Arabia, just to keep the lights on — at great cost to both consumers as well as soon to be unemployed California energy workers.

Who loses in the new California?

The future, if Sacramento gets its way, likely will resemble Jerry Brown’s old “era of limits” on steroids. It will become more expensive to get around, even in electric cars that rely on what are already among the country’s highest rates, almost twice as high as competitors like Texas, Arizona, Washington and Oregon, electricity that is rightfully seen as often unreliable as well. Our ability to buy housing, particularly the family-friendly variety, will also be restricted by a planning regime that seeks to cram most into small apartments.

This future appeals to some predictable voices, like The New York Times and The Atlantic, which see the fires on the urban edge as a reason to pack more people into our already congested, unaffordable cities. But these observations fail to distinguish between the heavily wooded areas on the hilly fringes of the metropolis — which are indeed fire-prone — and largely flat expanses of rangeland adjacent to both the Bay Area and the Los Angeles basin. If we don’t find safe places to build the kind of housing most people, notably families, need, our diminished housing choices will accelerate the rising tide of people and companies leaving the state.

These ruinous policies are not necessary. They are based largely on intense “virtue-signaling,” which might also provide the basis for Gavin Newsom’s eventual run for the White House. But he may consider what the rest of the country might think about the kind of bifurcated, dystopic society California now presents; it certainly did not help the failed presidential candidacy of Kamala Harris and was bad enough to keep the disaster that is L.A. Mayor Eric Garcetti out of the presidential sweepstakes.

To be sure, not everyone is suffering from the state’s mismanagement. The oligarchal firms of Silicon Valley, their venture funders and some of their unicorn offspring continue to rack up billions. They plan to house their young employees in glorified dormitories until they decide to leave.

But the path for the rest of Californians is not so clear. Over the past decade, most California metros, notes Chapman University’s Marshall Toplansky, are creating, on a per capita basis, far fewer mid- and high-paid jobs than the rest of the country, particularly places like Dallas, Charlotte, Austin and Salt Lake City. Higher-paid industrial jobs, critical to the working class’s progress, have grown well below the national average over the past decade; last year it was fifth from the bottom among the states.

What lies ahead

This economic disparity in the state, not climate change, as Newsom and his allies insist, remains the biggest challenge facing California. As much or as quickly as it manifests itself, climate will impact every part of the country and the world. The compelling issue should be not how California can heroically address climate issues, but how to do so without engendering a truly unsustainable social transformation.

In terms of fire and drought, there are practical steps to be taken, including allowing more extensive elimination of dead trees and brush as well as building extensive fire breaks, particularly near transmission towers. Potential water shortages can be best addressed with more storage and water-catchment systems as well as conservation and desalinization.

California could choose to reduce emissions in ways that, as longtime environmentalist and author Ted Nordhaus says, eschew “utopian fantasies” and “make its peace with modernity and technology.” There are proven, less economically intrusive ways to reduce emissions without skewering the middle class and turning them into permanent renters, like expanding hydro-electric, nuclear and, most importantly, increasingly abundant natural gas in favor of ruinously expensive renewables.

But efficiency and saving the middle class are not priorities for Sacramento’s empowered bureaucracy. Every time regulators impose more restrictions on home construction and force electricity and water rates up, impacting factories, farms and households, they contribute to the outrage that this richest of states also suffers the country’s highest poverty rate, and hosts many of the country’s poorest metros. A huge percentage of the population — over one third of the population, according to the United Way — are barely making ends meet. California is also home to roughly half of the country’s homeless.

The consequences of staying on this course are far scarier, at least in the short term, than anything that can be ascribed reasonably to climate. Despite the good intentions of some, misplaced environmental policies are building a society — already evident — that will restrict the trajectory, in particular, of the young and minorities, who are faced a declining number of well-paying jobs and ultra-inflated rents and housing prices.

We need is policies whose prime goal is not making the already fabulously rich, like Tom Steyer, or ambitious politicians like Newsom, feel better about themselves. We require an approach that offers hope to middle- and working-class Californians by improving housing choices, expanding industry and jobs, particularly in the poorer areas. New sustainable, and cost-effective, water, power and transport infrastructure constitute a critical part of this solution, as is an education system that teaches skills and practical training for students rather than fashionable “woke” ideology.

If we don’t reverse course, this bifurcated social structure, exacerbated by state policies, threatens something far more unsettling than any natural disaster. A society torn by seemingly unbreachable divisions represents the greatest, and most pressing, sustainability challenge before us.

This piece first appeared on The Orange County Register.

Joel Kotkin is the Roger Hobbs Distinguished Fellow in Urban Studies at Chapman University and executive director of the Houston-based Center for Opportunity Urbanism. He authored The Human City: Urbanism for the rest of us, published in 2016 by Agate. He is also author of The New Class Conflict, The City: A Global History, and The Next Hundred Million: America in 2050. He is executive director of NewGeography.com and lives in Orange County, CA. His next book, “The Coming Of Neo-Feudalism,” will be out this spring.

Photo credit: Scott L via Flickr under CC 2.0 License.

California's Man-made Power Outages

Ronald Stein — Tue, 29 Oct 2019 21:29:01 -0400

Californians are mired in a conundrum of conflicting goals to accommodate its growing population, its growing number of registered vehicles, the need for more housing to accommodate its growth, and the unrestricted growth of its forests where much of the housing is encroaching.

The public has strongly supported Obama-era regulations, which were a major rewrite of the country’s forest rules and guidelines. Those rewrites introduced excessive layers of bureaucracy that blocked proper forest management and increased environmentalist litigation and costs—a result of far too many radical environmentalists, bureaucrats, Leftist politicians and judicial activists.

Rather than allow utilities to have right of way control for their grid into the forests, the public has also allowed so-called environmentalists who have a very narrow view of nature, who don’t understand that without proper land management, which means an appreciable amount of logging, they are hurting wildlife and the long-term health of the forest as well as endangering human lives.

Supporters of current environmental regulations would rather see forests burn, than let professional loggers with forest management experience thin out overgrown trees, harvest usable timber left from beetle infestation or selectively cut timber.

Now, with people and electricity moving into the forests, the wide spread support of Obama-era regulations has resulted in the new normal: an endless and devastating fire season. The resulting fires are cauldron-hot conflagrations that exterminate wildlife habitats and roast bald eagle and spotted owl fledglings alive in their nests.

Those infernos are so hot they boil away trout and trout streams, leave surviving animals to starve. They incinerate every living organism in already thin soils that subsequently get washed away during future downpours and snow melts. Areas incinerated by such fires don’t recover their arboreal biodiversity for decades.

So much for a reliable electrical grid surviving in the unrestricted growth of the nation’s forests!

The unintended consequences of restricted forest management, proper maintenance of the current grid, and the unlimited lawsuits that arise from fires tied to the grid, is that corporate America (PG&E) and others are caught between a rock and a hard place. To minimize those lawsuits, it’s better to eliminate the potential causes of those fires from winds by just turning off the power.

Utility companies are granted general authority by the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) to periodically de-energize the grid as a preventative measure to protect public safety and maintain the grid’s viability. To do this, PG&E has implemented Public Safety Power Shutoff (PSPS) events, aka rolling blackouts, as a last line of defense against electric service disruption and possible harmful events to communities caused by utility equipment.

For the residents and businesses that are left with no power, they may be going back to pioneer days when you had to fend for yourself, thus a huge self-sufficiency incentive to provide your own electricity via diesel generators or solar panels. Since solar does not work when the sun is not shinning, or if there’s too much smoke in the air, the other drawbacks are greater emissions from ones’ diesel generators, or no power at all if your battery storage is inadequate for the duration of the utility outage.

Understandably, the public perception is that the PG&E policy appears to be nothing more than a very selfish approach to protecting corporate interests at the expense of customers who cannot shop elsewhere for this vital utility – electricity. To compound the problem, the state continues its efforts to sunset the oil and gas industry which would result in less diesel fuel for home generators

PG&E’s decision to protect itself from liability at the expense of hardworking Californians is the tough new norm that may not be tolerated. The utility’s course of action disregards people’s livelihoods as we depend on electricity to maintain a certain standard of living.

Millions without electricity resulting in schools, government offices and businesses simultaneously closing is what a third world country looks like, not a state that is the 5th largest economy in the world.

Employees were sent home as businesses had to shut their doors. Some workers are forced to go without pay. Parents scrambled to find babysitters, raced to buy battery-operated lights, and rushed home to prepare their families in anticipation of days of darkness. This is no way to live in the United States of America. Access to electricity is a necessity we have become accustomed too.

The increasing amount of housing in the wildland-urban interface—by some estimates, almost half of the housing stock built in the last few years in California—is largely being driven by the need to build in lower-cost areas outside of the urban cores.

Environmentalists are hostile to this new construction and resist policy changes that facilitate it. Instead, they’d like to see people driven off their wildland property through a combination of strict land use policies, a fire tax, and the loss of fire insurance.

Unless the public supports a major rewrite to those Obama-era regulations of all the country’s forest rules and guidelines, be prepared to live your lives “off the grid”.

Ron Stein is an engineer who, drawing upon 25 years of project management and business development experience, launched PTS Advance in 1995. He is an author, engineer, and energy expert who writes frequently on issues of energy and economics.

This piece first appeared on CFACT.

Greater Los Angeles Area Growth Tanking and Dispersing

Wendell Cox — Wed, 23 Oct 2019 20:29:58 -0400

For decades, there has been substantial dispersion of population in Greater Los Angeles (Los Angeles combined statistical area or CSA), as the suburban areas outside the urban core have dominated population growth. The latest population estimates by the US Census Bureau confirm the continuation of that trend. But something has changed. In recent years the Los Angeles CSA has experienced an unprecedented slowing of growth. The little growth has occurred has been dispersed away from coast, especially from Los Angeles and Orange counties to inland Riverside and San Bernardino counties. Indeed. Between 2017 and 2018, Riverside and San Bernardino counties, farther from the Los Angeles urban core than Orange and Ventura counties, accounted for all of the population growth of Greater Los Angeles.

The Los Angeles CSA is the broadest definition of the local labor market, as defined by the White House Office of Management and Budget. It includes the Los Angeles metropolitan area (Los Angeles and Orange counties), the Riverside-San Bernardino metropolitan area (Riverside and San Bernardino counties) and the Oxnard metropolitan area (Ventura County). Commuting trends between these metropolitan areas are strong, and the basis of the CSA’s formation.

Population Growth

In the first year of the decade (2010 to 2011), the Los Angeles CSA had a population growth of 0.82%, nearly a 10th of percentage point higher than the national rate of 0.073%. The Los Angeles growth continued above the national rate through 2012 though declined in both years. Since that time, growth has virtually tanked, with 2017 to 2018 population growth falling to 0.024%, more than 60% below the declining national rate of 0.062% (Figure 1). Between 2010 and 2011, the Los Angeles CSA gained 146,000 residents but only 45,000 residents between 2017 and 2018. Over the last year, the Los Angeles CSA added fewer new residents than the state of Utah, which has only one-sixth the population.

Much of the decline has occurred in Los Angeles County. For the first five years of the decade (2010 to 2015), Los Angeles County population grew an average of 55,000. Then growth tanked, with fewer than 3,000 new residents added annually from 2015 to 2018, and declines in 2017 and 2018. This loss led the Los Angeles metropolitan area (Los Angeles and Orange counties) into decline in 2018. The nation’s two other largest metropolitan areas, New York and Chicago also lost population. Between 2010 and 2015, Los Angeles County accounted for 42% of the CSA growth, but fell more than 90% between 2015 and 2018. Between 2010 and 2018, Los Angeles Country grew only 2.9%.

However, things were only marginally better in coastal Orange County. Orange County grew 34,000 in 2010-2011, but by 2017-2018 had an increase of only 6,000. Orange County grew 5.6% between 2010 and 2018. Ventura County, along the coast to the west of Los Angeles County experienced a similar trend, with much smaller numbers. Ventura County gained 5200 residents in 2010-2011, but by 2017-2018 grew by only 200. Ventura County’s eight-year growth was 3.1%, almost as slow as that of Los Angeles County.

The Inland Empire counties of Riverside and San Bernardino had by far the strongest growth. Riverside County grew between 26,000 and 35,000 each year and grew 11.3% between 2010 and 2018. Growth was somewhat slower in San Bernardino County, which started with growth of 21,000 in 2011, dropped somewhat and finished in 2018 within 18,000 gain. San Bernardino County gained 6.4% from 2010 to 2018 (Figure 2). In 2010 – 2011, the two Inland Empire counties accounted for 36% of the CSA growth. By 2018, they accounted for 116% of the CSA growth, as the total population declined in the three coastal counties.

Domestic Migration: Half a Million More Left than Came

The Los Angeles CSA has experienced negative net domestic migration for most of the past two decades, a trend that continued in every year between 2010 and 2018. In 2010 – 2011, there was a net domestic migration loss of 37,000, which expanded to a minus 102,000 in 2017 – 2018. There was an overall net domestic migration of 529,000 since 2010. Los Angeles County lost 534,000 (Figure 3).

Four of the five counties experienced net domestic migration losses between 2010 and 2018, with only Riverside County posting a gain (114,000). Orange County had small gains in the first two years but has lost ever since, with an 18,000 loss in 2018. Overall Orange County had a net domestic migration loss of 64,000 since 2010. Ventura County lost during each year and had a final net domestic migration loss of 21,000. San Bernardino County lost 24,000 between 2010 and 2018, but by the end of the period had small gains (Figure 4).

Strong International Migration

There was a gain in net international migration of 428,000, approximately making up for 80% of the domestic migration loss. Most of the gain (298,000) was in Los Angeles County. Orange County accounted for approximately two thirds of the 130,000 balance, with a gain of 86,000.

Natural Increase (Births Minus Deaths) Dropping Significantly

The annual natural increase in population has been declining. This measure, births minus deaths, dropped from 137,000 in 2010 – 2011 to 97,000 in 2017 – 2018, an overall decline of 29%. The decline in Los Angeles County was 32%. The largest decline was in Ventura County at 47%, and the lowest was in San Bernardino County at 19% (Figure 5).

One of the most important reasons that the natural increase in population is slowing down is that the Los Angeles CSA is aging rapidly --- with a median age that has doubled the national increase (Figure 6). The Los Angeles CSA is aging a full one-third faster than California as a whole. Other factors are contributing to this decline: There is the declining fertility rate, which is evident virtually everywhere in the nation. The substantial net domestic outmigration is also a factor. IRS data shows that California’s net domestic outmigration tends to be strongest among households from 26 to 44 years old, ages that produce most of the children. The slowest outmigration rate is among those aged 65 and over.

The components of Los Angeles CSA growth are illustrated in Figure 7.

Former Growing Los Angeles in Context

All of this adds up to a consequential reversal of the population growth that had characterized Greater Los Angeles, especially since 1950. The Los Angeles-Inland Empire urban area (which includes the continuous urbanization of Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside and San Bernardino counties) has grown by more than 11 million residents in the last seven decades (Note). Only Tokyo, Seoul and Osaka-Kobe Kyoto grew more among high-income world nations. At the same time, all of the first world urban areas larger than Los Angeles, these three and New York are doing less well than Greater Los Angeles in adding population.

Note: The continuous urbanization here is as reported in Demographia World Urban Areas. The growth since 1950 is estimated using data from Tertius Chandler, Four Thousand Years of Urban Growth: An Historical Census. Chandler’s work is generally considered the best on this subject.

Photograph: San Bernardino County: I-10/I-215 interchange at bottom, the city of San Bernardiono, Cajon Pass and, beyond the mountains, the Victor Valley. San Bernardino and Riverside counties (just to the south of the picture) had all of the population growth in Greater Los Angeles in 2017-2018.

Even Before the Blackouts, Most Californians Considered Leaving

Wendell Cox — Thu, 17 Oct 2019 20:56:56 -0400

For virtually all of its history from statehood in 1850 to 2000, California was a magnet drawing households from the rest of the United States for better lives. Indeed, in a nation that had its "American Dream," California had its own "California Dream." There was no Oregon dream, despite its mountains , seashore and proximity to California, nor was there a Maine or South Carolina dream.

And while California remains incomparable with respect to weather and access to beaches and mountains, the allure of the "California Dream" has faded significantly. Probably nothing demonstrates this more convincingly than the fact that since 2000, 2.2 million more residents have moved out to other states than in.

University of California Poll

A new University of California Berkeley IGS Poll indicates that many others are considering leaving the state. The poll was conducted in mid-September from a random sample of about 4500 registered voters. More than half of California's registered voters are giving serious consideration or some consideration to leaving the state. This includes 24% giving serious consideration and 28% giving some consideration.

Areas of the State

The poll divided the state into six areas but the results were fairly consistent. The core of the state's largest urbanization, Los Angeles County just under half (49%) are considering leaving the state. To the south, Orange and San Diego counties were combined in the analysis and their 50% of the households are considering leaving. The rest of Southern California, 56% of the households are considering moving out of the state. This area, dominated by a metropolitan area, Riverside – San Bernardino, is almost as large populous as metropolitan San Francisco and is the fastest growing major metropolitan area in the state.

Residents of the Central Valley exceeded the unhappiness level of the rest of Southern California, with 56% considering a move out of the state. The Central Valley had been growing faster than the rest of the state during the last decade, but considerably less than the previous decade.

Much of the state's economic growth has occurred during this decade in the San Francisco Bay area, which includes the San Francisco and San Jose metropolitan areas. Yet even in this area, indisputably the world's leading tech center, half of the residents (50%) are considering moving out of the state. The rest of Northern California, has the least unhappy households, with only 46% considering an interstate move (Figure 1). Of course, this was before PG&E cut off electricity to much of the area.

Age

There is more variation on intentions to move by age than by area, concentrated among those in the period of family formation and home-buying. Among households in the 40 to 49 category, 61% are considering a move out of the state while households in the 30 to 39 age group are 59% inclined to consider an interstate move. Among those aged 50 to 64, 53% are considering a move out of the state.

The only group where a majority intends to stay is those aged 65 or older, with only 40% considering a move out. This smaller number may be influenced to a great extent by this age group's ability to buy homes at at the much lower prices that prevailed before, The only group where a majority is staying put are those aged 65 or older. The youngest category, 18 to 29 , often an age before home buying and family formation, mirrors the statewide average, with 52% considering a move to another state (Figure 2).

Race and Ethnicity

The Berkeley IGS Poll also categorized responders by race and ethnicity. The most satisfied have been Latinos, 43% of whom indicated an interest in leaving the state. Asian scored similarly, with 44% while 56% of White non—Hispanics were considering an out-of-state move. The greatest dissatisfaction was indicated by African – Americans, 58% of whom are considering moving out. These last two figures are consistent with declining population shares. As late as 1980, white non—Hispanics were the largest ethnic group in the state and rank second now to Hispanics. African-Americans were the second largest ethnic group and now ranked fourth after Hispanics, White non—Hispanics and Asians (Figure 3).

African-Americans and White non-Hispanics both have majorities favoring a move out. The numbers are somewhat smaller with respect to the ethnicities that have increased most substantially in recent decades --- Hispanics and Asians. However, even among these ethnicities there is reason for concern, with more than 40 percent thinking of leaving.

Why Californians Want to Leave

California has long had the least affordable housing costs in the nation, which translate into the highest cost of living. Nearly all of the difference in cost of living between higher cost areas and the national average stems from housing (Figure 4). Not surprisingly, the top reason for wanting to leave was the high cost of housing, which was mentioned by 71% of respondents. High taxes were mentioned by 58% of respondents, and the state's political culture 47% . The poll generally found that more conservative people (as opposed to more liberal people) were more likely to consider moving.

Overcrowding was mentioned by 38% of the respondents. This is likely to become an even greater concern, since California's highest urban density in the nation is likely to be materially increased by state densification policies (Figure 5).

Things Could Get Worse

These reasons for leaving do not bode well for California. There is no indication that things will get better for potential leavers.

Housing costs are severely unaffordable and likely to get no better: Demographia International Housing Affordability Survey.

California's high taxes are not likely to be reduced. More likely they will continue to increase.

It is not surprising that people are concerned about overcrowding. California has the densest urbanization among the 50 states and strong densification mandates from the state likely to increase overcrowding. (see: "America's Most Urban States"). Largely as a result, California has the two most overcrowded metropolitan road systems (Los Angeles and San Francisco) in the nation as public officials pretend (largely innocently) that transit is an alternative to driving more than a few. Even so, the state is committed to even more densification, which promises to exacerbate the overcrowding, and make traffic congestion even worse.

California retains its great weather and beautiful scenery, but its status as America's dreamland has been shattered by the exiting millions.

Photograph: Outer suburbs of Los Angeles (western San Bernardino County), by author.

Los Angeles County Approves Plan to Sunset the California Economy - OpEd

Ronald Stein — Tue, 15 Oct 2019 21:33:53 -0400

A California Regional Sustainability Plan for the 88 cities of Los Angeles County to be carbon neutral by 2050 includes a sunset to the oil and gas industry. That 220-page plan will also sunset the 5th largest economy in the world. Sunsetting, as used here, means bringing it to a slow and untimely death.

The Plan scarily reflects the hysterics of Greta Thunberg, the Swedish 16 year old high school student with a mastery of social media but no college level education to speak of, whose emotional message has officials in Washington, D.C., the U.N, and now the County of L.A. believing the world will end soon if governments don’t act to prevent climate change by reducing CO2 emissions.

The L.A County SUNSET Strategy is to end oil and gas operations throughout Los Angeles County by 2050 in order to meet California’s carbon neutrality target and the state’s commitments under the Paris Agreement which excludes Russia, Turkey and Iran as those countries believe the countries that control natural gas and oil will control the world. Putin of Russia understands WW I and II were both won with fossil fuels to move planes, ships, tanks, troops and supplies.

Let’s be clear about what sunsetting of the oil and gas industry means. It means trying to support militaries, aviation, cruise ships, and merchant ships, and all the transportation infrastructures that support commerce with the intermittent electricity that solar and wind technologies bring to the table.

The Oil and Gas industry in California is one of the few manufacturing industries left in the state and they operate in the most environmentally controlled location in the world to meet the state’s huge appetite for energy it needs to support its infrastructures.

The Sunset plan’s goal is to not leave the 152,000 workers in the oil and gas industry stranded who have an average income of more than $80,000 but build them a bridge to cleaner jobs and industries. But WAIT, once solar and wind farms are in place, they require minimal maintenance from less technical talent, so the unintended consequences will be that those high wage earners will most likely begin to exit the state rather than compete for the low paying low tech jobs the new industry brings with it.

Los Angeles County, like Greta, may be unaware that sunsetting the oil and gas industry would increase GHG emissions to meet the daily energy used by Californians from fuels being manufactured in less environmentally stringent locations, and increased costs to import them into California ports:

California transportation infrastructures are consuming more than 60 million gallons of fuels per day, jet (13 million), diesel (10 million), and gasoline (42 million) are being used by the 5th largest economy in the world to support commerce. Without transportation infrastructures, there is no commerce.
California has major ports for cruise liners that are accommodating 25 million passengers per year. Each liner consumes around 80,000 gallons of fuel PER DAY, per liner. Also, billions of vehicle trips to and from airports, hotels, seaports, and amusement parks are increasing each year.
For the billions of dollars of products imported and exported through California ports, those merchant ships moving products around the world are consuming more than 200 tons of fuel PER DAY, per ship to move merchandise around the world.

On the World Stage

There are billions of people in undeveloped countries who are currently living in low economy horse and buggy days that developed countries left behind a century ago. They have yet to join the industrial revolution, and without oil and natural gas, they may never get that opportunity.

Almost half the world — over three billion people — live on less than $2.50 a day. At least 80% of humanity lives on less than $10 a day.

Incredibly, global poverty affects the poorest 40 percent of the world’s population of 7.7 billion which accounts for 5 percent of global income. The richest 20 percent accounts for three-quarters of world income. Water problems affect half of humanity.

Shockingly, there are 11 million child deaths every year, mostly from energy starved countries of which more than 70 percent of those deaths are attributable to six causes: diarrhea, malaria, neonatal infection, pneumonia, preterm delivery, or lack of oxygen at birth. About 29 thousand children under the age of five – 21 each minute – die every day, mainly from preventable causes.

Are Greta and her followers supporting these avoidable premature deaths as they campaign for changes to reduce emissions regardless of the cost to humanity? SO, what about those developing countries that have yet to join the industrial revolution while developed countries, like her home country Sweden, have enjoyed the benefits of human activities, lifestyles, and prosperity afforded by fossil fuels for the last couple of centuries?

Over half (5,477) of the world’s coal power plants (9,574) are in China and India whose populations of mostly poor peoples is roughly 2.9 billion. Together they are in the process of building 634 new ones. They are putting their money and backs into their most abundant source of energy – coal.

If Greta and her followers did their homework instead of ranting about climate change, they would possibly have learned that those developing countries yet to join the industrial revolution are missing out on several great things fossil fuels have done for humanity. Sunsetting fossil fuel use would negatively impact modern medicine, agriculture, longevity, and our ability to face natural weather disasters:

The Energy Information Administration (EIA) chart reflects the energy that electricity alone from wind and solar cannot support, i.e., the energy requirements of infrastructures that did not exist centuries ago.

Los Angeles County’s recently approved plan for energy sustainability and the sunsetting of oil and natural gas go hand in hand with Greta’s manifesto, now being shouted by her followers, and will negatively impact the lifestyles of those in developed countries more than those in developing countries, as they require regression to primeval times in order to be carbon neutral.

Those billions of people in underdeveloped countries living in poverty will see no changes to their dismal existence. They will continue to live in poverty like they’ve been doing for centuries, so for them, who have nothing to lose, the end of the world may be a relief.

This piece was previously published at Eurasia Review.

Ronald Stein, P.E. is the Founder and Ambassador for Energy & Infrastructure at PTS Advance.