It takes leadership to accomplish great things.

More than a generation ago, public and private leaders in Los Angeles joined hands to build the Music Center, a lasting and magnificent testament to their belief in the city and a wonderful gift to our own and future generations. Stroll along the Center’s granite walls some evening on your way to a concert or play, and you will see their names carefully etched there, silent witness to their foresight.

But the past few years have been tough in Los Angeles. Some people even suggest we’re bereft of leadership after riots, fires and the worst economy since the Depression and therefore drifting into our future. I know first-hand that’s not true. Since I took on the responsibility to help raise the funds to build Walt Disney Concert Hall a fitting addition to our city’s cultural “heart” at the Music Center I have encountered a new generation of leaders eager to demonstrate their belief in the Los Angeles of the 21st century.

In fact, the ultimate success of Disney Hall may very well come to symbolize the city’s new generation of leadership, hardened by years of trouble but now highly optimistic, as Los Angeles roars back. People such as Mayor Richard Riordan, Board of Supervisors Chairman Zev Yaroslavsky, Times Mirror CEO Mark Willes and Arco CEO Mike Bowlin have joined me in this effort together with Andrea Van de Kamp and Ron Burkle and the outlook has never been brighter.

The spirit of optimism now developing around Disney Hall is hardly a new phenomenon in our city. This is a place that has been blessed with visionaries in every generation, a place where big dreams regularly come true. Big dreams, however, don’t come true without big dreamers.

Early on, there was William Mulholland and the municipal water project. Later came Doheny and oil, the movie pioneers and Hollywood, Douglas and the aerospace industry. Today, the names and industries may be changing, but the infectious optimism is the same.

With visionary leadership in years past, we’ve built a community with world-class museums and cultural institutions, from the Hollywood Bowl and the Music Center to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the Museum of Contemporary Art. Add to that a world-class orchestra, renowned academic institutions and a vibrant community of the arts that rivals anything, anywhere.

Soon, we’ll be adding the breathtaking Getty Museum atop the Santa Monica Mountains and a new headquarters for the nation’s biggest Roman Catholic diocese, the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels, designed by Pritzker Prize-winning architect Jose Rafael Moneo.

A lack of leadership? Hardly. If anything, our new leadership is much more diverse than it was, as our economic base broadens with new industries from biotech to Web site design. We’ve always been a place where entrepreneurs invent new kinds of industries, and we welcome the newest crop to our midst. Our revitalization as a community now depends on new leaders willing to take risks and willing to shoulder the responsibility of building a better community.

And as we approach a new century, it’s imperative for this newest generation of Los Angeles leadership to step forward and be counted, to become more visible in dealing with the challenges of the future. Certainly, the recent gifts to Disney Hall are convincing evidence that our public- and private-sector leaders are not sitting on their hands. But if we want our future to be as bright as we know it can be, we need others to come forward.

I believe there is no shortage of such leaders; we just need to bring them to the table. Consider this: With little fanfare, Los Angeles has become home to more Forbes 400 companies than New York City, and the number of Fortune 500 companies is on the rise in Los Angeles and on the decline in New York. The spectacular growth of young companies, combined with the arrival of existing companies moving to Los Angeles, is accelerating our growth.

It’s already out of date to speak of the economic “recovery” of Southern California. With employment up, business starts soaring and tax revenues growing, we are on the cusp of an economic boom that should take us well into the 21st century.

It’s time for philanthropy to boom, too. To the long list of community builders from Harrison Gray Otis to Dorothy Chandler to Ed Carter to Franklin Murphy and Lew Wasserman, we need to add new names of those putting the interest of the community ahead of theirs. Some already have come forward, but many more are urgently needed.

Our predecessors did miraculous things, and their legacy enriches our lives. Now it’s our turn.

Eli Broad is chairman and CEO of SunAmerica Inc.