Chris Campbell: Modern Angeleno identity has to resolve fault lines of uneven growth

Daily Bruin Introduction
Imagine stepping into a time machine and traveling 100 years into the future. You find out that the city of Fargo, North Dakota, once barely a speck on the map, has become the country’s second-largest metropolis and the place to be for cosmopolitans and immigrants of every stripe – an internationally renowned commercial and cultural hub.
That’s exactly what Los Angeles is today. Over a century, the city has risen meteorically from a sleepy farming town in the middle of nowhere to a world-famous center of entertainment, business and pretty much anything else you can name. As of 2015, the Greater Los Angeles area was home to over 15 million people, making it the second largest urban area in the country and 19th largest in the world. Los Angeles’ gross domestic product is closing in on $1 trillion, placing it in the top tier of urban economies globally.
But for all its people and businesses, the city faces equally legendary problems: Its housing shortages, traffic jams, homelessness, inequality and issues of racial injustice have all become as well known as any movie studio in this city. And with it, the city is going through a bit of an identity crisis.
Make no mistake, Los Angeles’ era as a boomtown is over. The city – built on natural assets and sustained by the offer of a unique lifestyle centered around the automobile – now needs to reinvent itself as a true urban center if it wants to remain important in the coming years.
City leaders are emphasizing density, transit and social justice more than ever. But in order to find a way forward, the city must establish its civic identity once and for all – in other words, what it means to be an Angeleno in the 21st century.
The Western frontier
Americans didn’t really pay attention to Los Angeles for most of its early ...


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