Los Angeles

Other than the banking business, is there an industry more dependent on government handouts, sweetheart tax breaks, and accounting gimmicks than major league baseball?

What other than a baseball depletion allowance explains the economics of a team like the New York Yankees, which is paying Alex Rodriguez $275 million over ten years while building a new $1.3 billion stadium and charging front row season tickets holders $800,000 for a box of four seats?  read more »

California may yet be a civilization that is too young to have produced its Thucydides or Edward Gibbon, but if it has, the leading candidate would be Kevin Starr. His eight-part “Dream” series on the evolution of the Golden State stands alone as the basic comprehensive work on California. Nothing else comes remotely close.  read more »

Now that Senators have reconvened from summer hiatus, one of their first tasks will be to contemplate the greenhouse-gas cap-and-trade carbon market that President Obama would like to institute to blunt global warming. Their necks better be limber. Partisans of Keynesian, market-based regulations will undoubtedly point to the Midwest's federally run "acid rain" program to reduce harmful power-plant emissions as proof that giving industry profit incentives in cleaning up their operations can be successful.  read more »

The High Desert region north and east of Los Angeles sits 3,000 feet above sea level. A rough, often starkly beautiful region of scrubby trees, wide vistas and brooding brown mountains, the region seems like a perfect setting for an old Western shoot 'em up.

Today, it's the stage for a different kind of battle, one that involves a struggle over preserving the American dream. For years, the towns of the High Desert--places like Victorville, Adelanto, Hesperia, Barstow and Apple Valley--have lured thousands of working- and middle-class Californians looking for affordable homes.  read more »

Big cities will eventually get through the recession.

How much help they’ll get from the design-obsessed bloggers who are so anxious to shape urban life is open to question.

Consider the blogosphere in Los Angeles, which bubbled with reports of decapitated chickens turning up all around town earlier this year.

Some bloggers speculated that chickens were being killed in rituals of the Santeria cult, which has roots in Latin America. The speculation seemed on the way to becoming an urban legend.  read more »

In these hard times the New Zealand public is somewhat excited about the travel costs incurred by our Government Ministers and MPs. Overseas travel attracts particular rage and fury.

A particularly galling example is a proposal by Christchurch City Mayor Bob Parker, his CEO Tony Marryat, and an urban planner, to visit the US to investigate the performance of light rail in Los Angeles, San Francisco Bay Area, Seattle and Vancouver.  read more »

Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) Chief William Bratton’s pending departure makes now a good time to give him credit for a habit that draws scant attention amid talk of his traveling ways and unapologetic ego: The guy works very hard at every aspect of his duties.  read more »

California’s favorable climate makes it a haven for outdoor activity. Enlightened and forward-looking planning has largely preserved the waterfronts for public access and set aside a lot of space for public use and activity. Yet despite this, there are few great urban gathering spaces. This is most obvious in the two largest population centers – Los Angeles and San Francisco.  read more »

Debate about immigration and the more than 38 million foreign born residents who have arrived since 1980 has become something of a national pastime. Although the positive impact of this population on the economy has been questioned in many quarters, self-employment and new labor growth statistics illustrate the increasingly important role immigrants play in our national economy.  read more »

Few topics stir more controversy between urbanists and civic boosters than city rankings. What truly makes a city "great," or even "livable"? The answers, and how these surveys determine them, are often subjective, narrow or even misguided. What makes a "great" city on one list can serve as a detriment on another.

Recent rankings of the "best" cities around the world by the Economist Intelligence Unit, Monocle magazine and the Mercer quality of life surveys settled on a remarkably similar list. For the most part, the top ranks are dominated by well-manicured older European cities such as Zurich, Geneva, Vienna, Copenhagen, Helsinki and Munich, as well as New World metropolises like Vancouver and Toronto; Auckland, New Zealand; and Perth and Melbourne in Australia.  read more »