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PLANNING WATCH - Even though the United States is one of the wealthiest countries in the world, its cities, especially Los Angeles, are falling apart. It isn’t hard to list the problems that Los Angeles faces, even though they are barely mentioned in the City’s mandatory and/or legally-adopted General Plan elements. In most of the following categories, the future looks even worse than today.
- · Uncontrollable wildfires.
- · Massive earthquakes.
- · Widespread homelessness that has spread from downtown LA’ s historic Skid Row to the entire metropolitan area.
- · Automobile dependency, clogged streets, and congested freeways.
- · Declining mass transit ridership resulting from gentrification and Federal immigration raids.
- · Population decline for Los Angeles County from 9.8 million in 2025 to 8.8 million forecast for 2070.
- · Climate change resulting in worse wildfires and heat waves.
- · Immigration raids that have brought many economic sectors to a halt.
- · Public infrastructure deteriorating faster than the City can maintain it.
Most American cities have some of these problems, but Los Angeles has them all, while it is simultaneously preparing to host the 2026 World (Soccer) Cup and the 2028 Summer Olympics.
Since it is hard to imagine that so many urban problems can be quickly eliminated or hidden, like they were in LA for the 1984 summer Olympics, we can only wonder how the pols and the mass media will try to cover up major problems, like homelessness, that are too massive to conceal.
Why is Los Angeles overwhelmed by so many problems? The minor explanation is particular to Los Angeles, such as its many months without any rain, coastal geography, and nearby mountain ranges. The major part of the explanation deals with broad changes in Federal government budgeting. The US military and related categories, like Homeland Security, have received a growing percentage of Federal spending, while financial aid to cities, like Los Angeles, has precipitously declined.
Can anything be done about it? In theory, most of LA’s urban problems, like transportation, could be dealt with, but it would require broad social and political changes to free up billions in new Federal aid. But, after years of reductions in aid to cities like Los Angeles, the latest actions of the Trump administration reveal an even more precipitous drop, according to the Center of Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP). The proposed Federal budget hurts “a broad swath of families across rural, urban, and suburban parts of California and targets people who are immigrants and their families for particularly harsh treatment.”
Clearly, local government has been getting the short end of the Federal economic stick for several years, and the situation in California is getting steadily worse, not better. Los Angeles is preparing to lay off career civil servants to address a billion dollar budget deficit, and fellow CityWatchLA writer, Jack Humphreyville had calculated some of LA’s other unfunded liabilities:
- · $5 billion for maintenance of streets and sidewalks.
- · $2 billion for Recreation and Parks.
- · $8 billion for clean water compliance.
- · $1.2 billion for the Los Angeles River
- · $2 billion for the Convention Center
The conclusion is inescapable: Los Angeles is a city in deep crisis.
(Dick Platkin ([email protected]) is a retired LA city planner, who reports on local planning issues. He is a board member of United Neighborhoods for Los Angeles (UN4LA). Previous columns are available at the CityWatchLA archives.)
