Hd — Half-Full Happiness
Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan spent much of last week reminding everyone that the town is on a roll. “You have a safer city, a cleaner city, a friendlier city,” he told a group of Business Journal editors and reporters.
And who could doubt him? By all the usual yardsticks, it’s been an exceptional year: Unemployment is down, job growth is up, crime is falling and downtown is reviving. Through it all, people both here and around the country are again looking at Los Angeles, not as some crime-ridden and corrupted place where they happen to make movies and TV shows, but as one of the world’s most diverse and important economies.
All in all, not much to complain about, especially compared to a few years ago, when L.A. almost became a national joke. But as we close the books on 1997, it might be wise to splash a little cold water on the picture not as a killjoy, mind you, but as a realistic point of reference for the new year.
Because let’s face it, things are good but they ain’t great.
– Jobs: It’s true that L.A. County unemployment has been falling for much of the year, but a UC Santa Barbara economist has pegged annualized L.A. job growth at 1.75 percent for the 12 months ended Oct. 31 not terrible, but well below high-flying areas like Houston and Phoenix and near the bottom among California counties. Not too surprisingly, job growth in parts of the city of Los Angeles remains lower than anywhere else in the county. In the central city, it’s a tiny 0.3 percent.
– Crime: It’s true that violent crime is significantly down in L.A. as well as elsewhere in the nation but that doesn’t mean it’s non-existent. Rarely a day goes by when at least one homicide hasn’t occurred and there are parts of town where the sound of gunshots is an everyday part of life. Not incidentally, these happen to be many of the same places where job growth is low.
– Downtown: It’s true that a new sports arena and concert hall will provide an economic stimulus to the area, but it won’t happen for at least another couple of years and even then, the extent of the uptick is unclear. Meanwhile, more businesses are moving out of downtown, keeping the office vacancy rate among the highest in the nation.
– Image: L.A.’s image has come a long way from those days of riots, earthquakes, recession and O.J. The recent Getty opening generated a barrage of mostly favorable press, not only about the center but also about L.A.’s growing influence as an art center. This image thing, though, is still a work in progress; witness L.A.’s omission from a recent Fortune magazine list of the nation’s most improved cities, along with more quantifiable omissions, such as the lack of venture capital activity.
There are other challenges a clogged-up transportation system that will get little, if any, relief from the public disaster known as Metro Rail; an educational system that, despite a few success stories in selected charter schools, remains a study in bureaucratic inefficiency; the misguided secession efforts by several L.A. communities, most notably in the San Fernando Valley; a dysfunctional City Council that finds some members acting like feudal lords instead of elected officials; and a city where balkanization is firmly in place, based on race, ethnicity and income.
Is the glass half empty or half full? Since it’s holiday time, we’ll say half full with an asterisk.
