‘The Next Wave’: Voodoo Journalism

If “Catching the Next Wave” (Opinion, Aug. 11) is any indication of how the new generation of business leaders is being informed and educated, then the future of the Southern California economy will indeed be bleak.

Joel Kotkin’s vision of the economic and political scene is filled with imaginary demons and evildoing “progressives” whose gravest sin, it seems, is believing that “wealth creation” and “fairness” can occur together. Hobgoblins appear everywhere, from the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce and “Establishment” boardrooms to the teeming hordes of neighborhood activists and UCLA academics bent on subverting the new leadership being prepared--we are led to believe--under his guidance at Pepperdine University’s School of Business and Management.

Kotkin’s self-serving manipulation of facts and opinions hides behind the usual protective shields of what can be called voodoo journalism. Everyone who might disagree with his vision is tarred with the brushes of misguided “political correctness,” cappuccino liberalism or flaming contempt for everything sacred in the American way of life. His is a New Age war of images, where all opposing ideas are made to disappear. The result is visionary distortion of the worst sort.

There is particular irony (and distortion) in his direct attack on the UCLA Graduate School of Architecture and Urban Planning. Apparently unhappy with the work of some of its faculty on the widening income gap and increasing poverty that has accompanied the otherwise healthy expansion of the regional economy over the past several decades, Kotkin dismisses the entire school (and throws in the rest of UCLA for good measure) as promoters of contemptuous and “ruinous” images of Los Angeles.

I can only suggest that Kotkin (and his student entrepreneurs) become better informed about the work of the school (and UCLA) faculty, beginning perhaps with the Times article (“Rethink and Retool to Revitalize,” Commentary, Aug. 8) by Allen Scott, the acting director of the newly established Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies at the graduate school.

Commenting on the center’s recent research on the electric-car industry and its potential for expansion, Scott forcefully points to the need to combine the region’s proved technological and entrepreneurial talents with new kinds of public and government support to help revitalize the currently sagging regional economy. Buried under Kotkin’s frantic blanket of condemnations is a similar constructive message, but it is smothered in incoherence and poor judgment.

EDWARD W. SOJA, Professor of Urban and Regional Planning, UCLA