Preparing L.A. for the Year 2000 : Increases in Population, Traffic, Ethnic Diversity Ahead

Los Angeles in the year 2000: expect the population to increase even more, even more traffic jams, an even greater mosaic of peoples speaking a variety of languages.

But think positively. At least that’s what Mayor Tom Bradley would have people do. Think of it as an opportunity like the Olympics--to reach out, to learn. As he told the 300 or so people gathered at USC’s Town and Gown for a recent conference on this subject: “There’s no reason why we should not prepare for the changes--dramatic though they may be. Rather than thinking of it with fear and consternation, we should accept this as another challenge, an opportunity to be handled . . . with brains and heart.”

Clearly, Bradley and the conference planners--the city’s Human Relations Commission and USC’s Office of Civic and Community Relations--were hardly jumping the gun. The year 2000, after all, is only 15 years away.

Only 15 years away? That stark realization may have caused the greatest stomach wrenching at the conference. Up to then, people had been wondering why they’d been invited, what they even had to contribute. Here they were, after all, city and county employees, representatives of neighborhood and ethnic groups, some who’d been connected with human relations organizations throughout the Southland and some of them high school students.

They all were aware of the facts: how, during 1982, more than 90,000 immigrants settled in Los Angeles and, since 1970, more than 2 million; how during this period, the city’s Latino population has doubled, yet the “Asian/Other” population had the fastest growth rate (150%) of all ethnic groups; how the non-Latino white population declined by half a million, mainly a result of out-migration to other parts of the United States.

For all the publicity these figures have received in the last few years, for all this talk about Los Angeles being the gateway to the Pacific Basin--who’d really given much thought to the future of their city? Who’d even thought about whether they’d be in Los Angeles in the year 2000? (During an informal poll taken by conference chairman Juanita Dudley during lunch, about one-third raised their hands that yes, they might be moving away by 2000.)

Rise in Personal Services

The idea behind the conference, as expressed by Warren Steinberg, principal of Fairfax High School and president of the city’s Human Relations Commission, was to create a mini-think tank, to brainstorm problems and possible solutions that could then be passed on to the appropriate people in city government. But first there was Selwyn Enzer, director of USC’s Center for Futures Research, to put this futures thinking in proper perspective. For instance, jobs will be there, he said. But the problem: “We’re moving away from goods production to service production, or away from blue collar to white collar and pink collar. That’s personal services.

“There’s a high potential for mismatch . . . with the rise in high-tech jobs and the increase in Latino immigrants who have not had the educational background (to fit these jobs).

“A mismatch is never good, but when it’s along ethnic lines, it’s a real problem. There has to be a restoration of human capital.

“The prospect for ethnic harmony is more likely to be achieved through an economic recovery program that everybody can share.”

What’s more, he said, the impact of women on the job market could not be downplayed. “Traditionally, women were either consigned to the kitchen or the classroom. Now women can go anywhere and get a high-paying job. If we want good teachers, we have to pay them.

“I’ll tell you,” Enzer continued, “I really have to plug the education side. We shouldn’t underestimate the importance of this as an issue.”

The topics explored in workshops in Taper Hall: industry-employment; housing, health and welfare; education; crime and justice/legal rights, and, finally, what many people said the conference was really about--community and intergroup relations.

Nobody had any pat answers or, for that matter, revolutionary ideas.

Indeed, Julian J. Keiser, executive director of the Community Relations Conference of Southern California, looked at the situation almost fatalistically as he addressed the crowd that filled the room for the intergroup relations workshop:

“Our problems have much further rootage in our cultures. We’re going to have to face that. People just tend to think their own rootage is best. I think we’re going to keep doing all things civil rights people have been doing for the last 20 years. We’re going to have to build a climate where public opinion makes bigotry not socially acceptable.

“We used to think that everyone should get together, should be assimilated. Now we think in terms of separatism and pluralism. That makes our task more difficult. The changing population could result in increased tension and conflicts--especially toward the new immigrants and especially in competition for low-income housing and jobs.”

The National Urban League’s Henry Talbert was scarcely more optimistic. Not only was the population change going to affect Los Angeles in the year 2000, he said, but there was gentrification (a phenomenon where the upper-middle class or wealthy move in and renovate areas formerly inhabited by the poor thus displacing them); creeping conservatism, intergroup suspicions, challenges to the “old line” establishments by the new ethnic groups; a crunch in funding programs.

More concerns, these from the workshop participants: learning to communicate in a second language (about 50% of the participants said they spoke a second language); what to do with the people who were effectively locked out of a community--like high school dropouts; how to get funds for job training, and, if individuality is stressed, is unity sacrificed?

The solutions all dealt with communication, from learning to speak more languages (and conversely, listening to what people say) to creating a speakers bureau. More were: planning committees to work on special programs; a public relations campaign to create attitudinal changes (much like what was done for the Olympics); empower key groups; increase regional training programs; bring special education days and new history books into the classroom (“in other words, start with the children”); make ethnic studies mandatory in school; include business groups in all planning; use purchasing power to influence businesses.

No less intense was the atmosphere at the education workshop where the speakers included Santiago Jackson and Robert Martin, representing the Los Angeles Unified School District; Winston Doby, UCLA; Jack Fujimoto, West Los Angeles College.

The Need to Change

One after another, the message was the same: classrooms are suffering, schools are suffering; teachers are suffering--and that’s even before dealing with the need to change curricula in response to high technology.

But as they contemplated solutions, USC’s Eleanor Blumenberg told the workshop participants: “Remember to think realistically of people, that this is their turf, geographically and psychologically. People need a means of socialization besides the bond of language.”

The response? What might be described as Band-Aids: utilizing volunteers as tutors and to assist classroom teachers; recruit teachers from among those looking for a career change; make discretionary funds available to school principals.

The real solution, people agreed, was expressed by Robert Martin: “American society is going to have to make education a national priority. No one asks the military to do without. That’s because it’s a priority. We can think no less of education.”

More Single-Parent Households

Reports from the other workshops:

--Expect the number of teen-age pregnancies to continue to rise; divorces to increase along with single-parent households and more fathers getting custody of their children. Also expect an increase in the demand for health care and low-cost housing. By year 2000, said Lola Hobbs, former director of Los Angeles County Children’s Services, she hopes to see a staff of stable permanent experienced employees at McLaren Children’s Center in El Monte, the overcrowded conditions relieved and more community involvement.

“Realistically, though,” she said, “looking at the long term, the department will always struggle. There will never be enough available to handle all the problems.”

--Housing needs are the same as those of the last 25 years: fair housing, decent housing for low- and moderate-income persons and desegregation of all ethnic groups and income levels. “We must have planning for integration of ethnic groups and low-income persons or else we may have serious conflicts in the future,” the workshop report concluded.

--On dealing with drugs, gangs and graffiti: early school programs; instructions to acquaint parents with effective support strategies; attractive youth organizations; more youth employment, particularly in the high-tech field; total commitment from the adult community.

--From the industry and employment workshop moderated by John Saito: government must play a more efficient role to reduce federal deficits, improve the educational system, support international trade, let private industry function with well-developed strategies, provide incentives to private industry to put a ceiling on prices. The private sector must take more risks and realize that it needs to play a more important role in society. Look to yuppies to introduce new ideas and higher expectations.

But at the end of the day, Fred Massarik, professor in the UCLA graduate school of management, warned people to keep their perspective--after all “1984 has come and gone without the dire predictions of Orwell . . . (coming true). We need a more sophisticated attitude.

‘Surviving Until the Year 2000’

“Let’s not get overly ambitious,” he said. “Instead of a 15-year plan, let’s shorten it to two- or three-year plans and do some good looping feedback so we can talk in terms of surviving until the year 2000. . . .

“We’re not going to start from scratch. Instead we need to think in terms of redesigning our city, our neighborhood. How to redesign social groups and management.”

But there was something else, he added, a “plaintive comment” that he felt compelled to make even as all this energy was being expended on realizing what Mayor Bradley had called “Los Angeles’ ultimate destiny.”

“I’d like you to consider some universals: Who am I? It’s a question of personal identity. And what’s going on, which is at the core of identity. Also the need for a closeness to others.

“If we are going to do the job of redesigning our community, our relationships, then these universal questions must be answered by each one of us.”

“Curious, isn’t it,” he concluded with a wry laugh. “Selwyn Enzer started today by giving us a macro-picture of the future. But when we leave here, I tell you it all comes down to the micro-picture.”