Globalizing L.A.: Trade, Infrastructure, and Regional Development

Rating:
Summary: Insfrastructure is THE Leader
Review: The one thing that our San Diego city fathers haven't a clue about has to do with infrastructure.
Now, before I lose you because infrastructure is not a known attention getter, here's the punchline. Read Steve Erie's new book, "Globalizing L.A." (and San Diego), published by Stanford University Press.
Steve Erie is a professor of political science and director of the Urban Studies and Planning program at UCSD. He is fun and sparkling to listen to, with a wonderful mind to match his immense knowledge. He appeared at D.G. Wills Books in La Jolla.
Erie also leads SD Civic Solutions committee studying infrastructure, a most boring word until a pothole appears in your street to poke your wheels out of alignment. Yet infrastructure is the foundation for all else that any city or neighborhood requires to function at all.
The strangest part of civilization is that any otherwise "normal" voter could find the word boring; boring until you've read Erie's words and his verbal comment and wit on the subject.
He tells us that Los Angeles was second to San Diego until the former began understanding the need for expansive airport, harbor, freeways, bridges and you name it, while America's sleepiest city, San Diego, had added hundreds of thousands of people to its environs.
San Diego has population but forgot foundation. So much of its "foundation" is clichÈ like "best weather" (it is), "America's finest city" (self-anointed to thumb its nose at a Republican Convention that had insulted us), and of course, "laid back."
As a person who moved to L.A. in its good old days, sunshine and winter warmth were the only infrastructure I needed, until the freeways became parking lots and I looked for someone to blame, not having read Pogo yet.
Professor Erie warns that to be a lasting global place, it isn't enough to have the world's third busiest port system and fourth busiest airport. Erie brings out leadership as a compelling reason for L.A.'s progress, including Mayor Tom Bradley's marvelously astute and trusted leadership. When I was a young leader there, I worked with Tom Bradley and some of the great entrepreneurs whose love of place was high above their own vanities.
However, past evidence is celebrated, these are new times, with new issues. As Orange and San Diego counties have evidenced, there is a split between some of the population who believe that new jobs mean more traffic and those who feel that more jobs allow their families to progress and survive.
"It's the economy, stupid," has been replaced with more, "it's the plants, endangered species, canyons, animals and waterfront which must be protected more than the human specie; in addition, the role of traffic as a deal killer, whether it be auto or airplane, and now the threat and fear of terror.
Erie explains that our needs for precious infrastructure is severely underfunded which threatens competitiveness. We are bush-league in much of our planning and funding while China becomes a new global power with its massive expenditures on infrastructure.
Erie criticizes the "Latte Index" which equates progress with how many Starbucks and big boxes are in an area. The so-called "creative class" is synonymous with Silicon Valley and our intellectual achievement.
There are the "boring" erector set ingredients that can't earn a buzz from them as long as the coffee is imported and fresh. The oil companies learned that people will pay anything to please their cars; they learned this from how much people will pay for a cup of java sprinkled with sugar and heavy cream.
By emphasizing the role as catalyst that public capital investments plays, and how vital infrastructure is in shaping the future of a community, Erie seeks to reshape contemporary policy debates concerning key competitiveness and success. This book adds invaluably to knowledge of regional governance and development, foretelling which places will become smart cities and which will be future ghost towns.