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Un-Pave Paradise and Put Up a Lot of Parks
In the heat of five o’clock traffic, most of us hate freeways, those angry, crowded entities that were designed in the vain hope we would never feel angry or crowded. However, a growing trend in urban...
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Soap Operas Can Save the World
Meet Jessie, a shy Latina teen in East Los Angeles who just wants to survive chemistry class, help out her single mom, and escape high school still a member of what she and her best friend call “the...
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Fleeing Los Angeles for Harrisburg
Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, that is. Los Angeles doesn’t need a state like Angelina doesn’t need a Jolie. That explains a lot of residential relocation. You go where you know. Well, the tables have...
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Sites We Like
CERTAINTYOFHOPELESSNESS.COM A 21st-century update of Swiftian political pamphlets of yore, this PDF offers a mix of practical and absurd options that America’s growing legion of deeply indebted...
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‘Unprecedented Levels’ of Mental Illness Among Gang Members
The New York Times Magazine this past weekend had a great piece about the persistent problem of gang violence in Los Angeles, and the Los Angeles Police Department’s changing tactics against it. The...
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Displacing Poverty
For the well-to-do, the world is flat. For the poor, geography matters. Who moves changed about 50 years ago. The Immigration Act of 1965 dispensed with racial-based quotas and profoundly impacted...
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Urban Islands of Poverty and Bowling With Strangers
Not all poor urban neighborhoods suffer from the same poverty challenges. In fact, not all poor urban neighborhoods have a poverty problem. The poverty rate may be high, but the community provides a...
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In the Picture
A street scene in Los Angeles, our first installment of IN THE PICTURE, taught us about the surprisingly perilous lives of arborists (killed at three times the rate of policemen and firefighters) and...
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What Would Make the Los Angeles Airport Bombs 'Terrorism'?
Four bombs found smuggled into a restricted area of Los Angeles International Airport had no links to terrorism, a detective told the L.A. Times. How can bombs at an airport, two of which exploded, not...
View ArticleThe Armenian Power Gang, Hollywood Hellions
This Valentine’s Day, the Justice Department announced that 40-year-old Andranik Aloyan, of Los Angeles, had been convicted for his role in one of the largest racketeering conspiracies in the country’s...
View ArticleHydrogen Fuel Is Set to Take Off, but Is It Safe?
It was just before 3 p.m. on a Thursday afternoon and traffic was moving smoothly on the Pomona Freeway, about 20 miles outside downtown Los Angeles. Suddenly, a truck carrying compressed hydrogen...
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The Secret World of Fast Fashion
Over the past 15 years, the fashion industry has undergone a profound and baffling transformation. What used to be a stable three-month production cycle—the time it takes to design, manufacture, and...
View ArticleLos Angeles Is Beginning to Look a Lot Like Pittsburgh
I received a good comment on my last post about the histories of economic and migration data. To summarize what I wrote, popular approaches to data analysis hide positive migration trends. A reader of...
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The 30 Top Thinkers Under 30: The Gates Millennium Scholar Who Wants to ‘Make...
Felix Ruano, 19, Economics Felix Ruano grew up in a rough part of Los Angeles. His parents, who immigrated from Mexico three years before he was born, work in a Korean restaurant for a pittance. At one...
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Race, Jobs, and Gentrification
Go ahead and tweak the zoning code. Unleash density. Let the developers build. Houston, we have a gentrification problem: The skyscrapers of downtown Houston are plainly visible from the city’s Third...
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