Rob Montz: Is Los Angeles Doomed?

Los
Angeles hit peak swagger in the mid-1980s. After a decade of
dwindling population, Los Angeles County was again gaining people.
Hollywood had near-perfected the summer blockbuster. The city’s
downtown subway system was finally complete. And a Soviet-bloc
boycott had left the L.A.-hosted 1984 summer Olympics to serve as
an ostentatious demonstration of American exceptionalism.

But the romantic, popular conception of the city that solidified
in those years bears increasingly little resemblance to Los Angeles
today, Rob Montz writes. L.A. now suffers from a deluxe-size
version of the vicious urban feedback loop that’s already swallowed
up several
smaller cities in California: a shrinking job market, rapidly
escalating public pension costs, and widespread deterioration in
general infrastructure.

These trends are partially attributable to the lingering effects
of the financial crisis and broader
transformative forces affecting the entire national
economy, writes Montz. But there is also ample bureaucratic
incompetence behind the city’s decline.  

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