New York City: 1983
In a recent post about why the LA Times is underachieving its readership and investors, John Stodder asks if the problem lies not with the paper, but with the city of Los Angeles itself:
“Something’s gone out of Los Angeles — confidence, a sense of identity, a belief in the future. A thriving newspaper is, at some level, a product of boosterism. Los Angeles has a lot of paid advocates, but few boosters. That’s a big change, historically.
Los Angeles has had a tough couple of decades since the triumph of the 1984 Olympic Games. Once upon a time, we accepted progress as a given. Nowadays, we accept decline and the intractability of our problems. Schools, traffic, housing costs, the environment — who is telling us these things can get better? Well, sure, lots of people say so, especially when there’s an election coming up. But who really believes?”
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But how horrible are things in LA anyway? Is the situation so dire and awful?
In the 1970’s and 80’s, New York City was in decline as Los Angeles is today. The New York Times sat in the midst of a slum called “Times Square” and said absolutely nothing about the appalling condition of the district which it gave birth to. Newspapers do not take a lead in cleaning up a city, nor should they become “boosters” of the area that they serve. Their job is to report the events around them in an objective and realistic way. If the Times becomes the biggest megaphone lauding a revival of Los Angeles, then it will cease to be a credible newspaper.
However, Mr. Stodder is dead on correct in stating that this city lacks a confidence and vision. The events of life here seem to take place in a fun house of extremes: either people shooting each other in the street or the red carpet premiere. We see men and women eating out of garbage cans on Ventura Boulevard as $80,000 SUV’s plow down the street. There is great cruelty in Los Angeles. Yet 40 or 50 years ago, it was a progressive city with fantastic schools, a growing economy and a sense that it was leading the world in technology, music, and something called leisure time.
But look at the 1983 photos of New York City. Is LA that bad? If they can pull themselves back up from the bottom……..
Here in Van Nuys 
1) Sprawl is the enemy here, destroying our quality of life, increasing commute times and destroying “leisure time.” No matter how many freeways you build, you’re going to be spending far too much time commuting if you live 100 miles away from your job.
2)The only place to build affordable single family homes is out in the desert. And there’s no job base there. Unless you’re working at the local Wal-Mart, you’re in your car three hours a day.
3) The only solution is urban infill building, high rise condominiums, density, and public transit. That, or a horrible disease that kills 60% of our population. That would help.
4) New York was never all as bad as those pictures, which are correct but don’t tell the whole story. True, those pictures look like Dresden after World War II. But that’s probably the South Bronx, the most horribly devastated area of the city. Only a percentage of New York ever looked like that. In fact, parts of New York STILL look like that, in spite of how far the city as a whole has bounced back. And you’re right, even the worse parts of L.A. don’t look that bad, but they’re pretty bad.
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Um, the housing price is only out of the reach of average Joes?
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I feel like transportation is the big problem. Los Angeles now has the density of New York but there’s no way to get around. So people kid of pool up in various neighborhoods. Some areas are nice some are total hell. But it’s the begining of a feedback loop that I’m afraid is just getting worse. With housing costs so far out of reach for the average Joe it’s just getting a little a little hopeless around here.
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Well, accepting the down turns is kind of a good beginning. At least, blames are not being wrongfully assigned.
It’s important to face the facts why a post-War L.A. rose so fast and began to deflate in the 70’s as well (Watts was the brutal first blow to the celluloid image of lala land). L.A.’s “downtown” declined even way before that. The racism has prolonged and the ’84 Olympics was only a result of short-term investment. LA “presisted” or arguably prospered like the rest of other American suburban metropolis areas, but its core declined just like all other urban centers. More depressingly, it’s the sudden death of a short-lived civic mindedness.
In fact, the economy of the region has continued to grow, which further proves that it’s still pulling off at being in self-denial and with sheer wealth of income that the mass hard-working citizens and non-citizens generate.
We are not at the rock bottom; being in the brink of bankrupcy like NYC in the 70’s is. We are in limbo, and possibly worse that way.
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