COMMENTARY : How To Make the Future Work

Beware the “Asian threat” ; America is on the decline. Or so goes the conventional wisdom, much of it from East Coast-based thinkers. But Joel Kotkin, author of “The Third Century: America’s Resurgence in the Asian Era,” (Crown, Fall 1988), disagrees. Kotkin, who is West Coast Editor of Inc. magazine, instead suggests that the Pacific Rim’s growing economic dominance represents an opportunity for the United States to capitalize on its ethnic diversity and entrepreneurial skills. And, Kotkin contends, as a main player in this scenario, Los Angeles’ inevitable ascendancy as a world-class metropolis presents new challenges for city leaders.

IN SOME sense, what they think back East isn’t really important. No matter how much the old entrenched centers along the Atlantic deny it, Los Angeles is virtually certain to rise to national pre-eminence--driven by massive immigration, the explosion of Pacific Rim economic power and the city’s buoyant entrepreneurial economy.

But more relevant for the future is how Los Angeles and its leaders respond to the challenges of its galloping success. By the year 2000, notes the U.S. Commerce Department, the L.A. metropolitan region will pass New York in population, employment and total income. Yet, to date, few around town seem to be thinking about how to cope with the problems this growth will bring.

This new challenge differs drastically from single-mindedly promoting economic growth, the traditional concern of Los Angeles’ leaders. Instead of simply providing the engines of economic expansion--from the building of the Los Angeles aqueduct and the freeway systems to the more recent expansions of the harbor and airport--in the future, Southern Californians must begin to deal with properly managing that growth. And given the current federal budget constraints, it is likely that these initiatives--zoning and transportation programs, for example--and the money to pay for them, must come from here at home.

This means, perhaps more than anything else, that L.A. needs a new and assertive “civic culture”--a shared vision and commitment to its future. For many decades Southern Californians, epitomized by men such as Ronald Reagan and Howard Jarvis, have defined themselves as people who largely oppose governmental activism. Our entrepreneurial individuality, the chaos of our geographic sprawl and our ethnic diversity have helped keep us from developing a strong sense of political community.

Yet Los Angeles cannot hope to make a successful transition to its new role as center of America’s emerging post-European economy without building this new civic culture. Southern California’s leaders must innovate in the 1990s as the New York Establishment did in its heyday more than a half-century ago.

In the ‘20s and ‘30s, New York’s leaders confronted problems at least as severe as those now facing Southern California. To cope with a large population of undereducated, poorly paid immigrant workers, they fashioned a political approach to economics--reflected in labor law reform, welfare programs and support for public education--that became the model for the New Deal. And by incorporating the contributions of its Jews, Italians, blacks and others traditionally outside the mainstream, New York produced a remarkable intellectual and artistic environment that made it the undisputed cultural capital of the Western World.

New York’s elite also shaped the very direction of American strategy in world politics. Troubled by the recurrent problems of European war and then Soviet expansionism, a New York-dominated political establishment created organizations such as NATO and the Atlantic Alliance that reflected a world view appropriate to those times, with Europe at its center.

Now Los Angeles should begin shaping American attitudes. And the most critical concern may be race. Southern California--where one of every eight foreign-born Americans now lives--reflects America’s demographic future. Today, upward of 40% of the population in the Los Angeles region is black, Latino or Asian.

The challenge for Southern Californians will be to foster a sense of tolerance, even pride, in our ethnic diversity. Like the old New York WASP Establishment, which initially viewed the tides of Italian, Polish and Eastern European immigrants with alarm, many residents of Los Angeles see the current newcomers as a threat. A 1987 poll of Southern Californians by Mervin Field, for instance, found that 30% believe that the new immigrants are taking jobs from them.

Rather than fearing immigrants, Los Angeles business, political and cultural leaders would be better served by recognizing that the newcomers will play a central role in the city’s development. These new Angelenos, largely because of their higher birthrates, represent a booming consumer market for the next century. Los Angeles Latinos, for example, now have more buying power than all of metropolitan St. Louis. And the immigrants’ buying power will increase as they become an increasingly important component of the Southern California work force.

But this “immigrant edge” also could, as some have suggested, lead to a “two-tier” society, with whites out in the middle-class suburbs while Latinos, blacks and some Asians remain clustered in low-paying jobs in the inner-city. To avoid this scenario, we ought to place far greater emphasis not only on promoting racial tolerance, but on providing services that can help newcomers compete.

Perhaps the most important step involves increasing our commitment to education, both in schools and at workplaces. This will mean replacing our current anti-tax reflexes with an “investment” oriented mentality that sees money spent on education now as providing lucrative payoffs in the future. And businesses must see providing basic language and technical training as crucial to their growth. Already some, such as Orange County’s Fireplace Manufacturers Inc., have set up English language and other classes to boost the productivity of its Latino workers.

Another key component involves steering economic growth into areas where immigrants are most concentrated, such as East Los Angeles and the “Asian corridor” along the mid- Wilshire area.

In an era of growing labor shortages, nightmare auto commutes and soaring home costs, it will make in creasing economic (as well as environmental) sense for industries to locate plants closer to workers rather than following the traditional path ever farther out to the city’s fringes. Irvine-based AST Research Inc., for instance, recently decided to move its main factory from pricey Irvine to more working class Fountain Valley, closer to the homes of most of its predominantly Asian and Latino employees.

Such private efforts can hardly provide the necessary leadership without strong local government support. Ironically, the entrepreneurial nature of L.A.’s economy makes such public aid even more important than it is in areas such as New York City, where the economy is dominated by large corporations and where key improvements can often be paid for by corporate giants. But smaller companies, the key to making L.A.’s economy dynamic, cannot afford to put in their own highways, sewer lines or intensive education programs.

Los Angeles must also provide an American vision that serves its own interest. As the prime entry point for Pacific Rim trade, for instance, Southern California should lead a political fight against the growing pressure for protectionist legislation that could threaten our key markets and the Asian investment capital so crucial to our growth.

Our leaders must develop a set of new political priorities that place Asia and Latin America, rather than Europe, at the center of national concern. For instance, Southern California should be a driving force behind American initiatives that lead, perhaps, to free-trade agreements with Japan, Mexico and other trading partners.

All this is an ambitious undertaking, but this new leadership role is not beyond our reach. Like the New Yorkers who shaped America’s European past, Angelenos are capable of setting the tone for our Pacific-dominated future. But it will mean developing both self-confidence and a vision worthy of the destiny at our doorstep.