Look to 480 BC if You Think L.A.’s Future Is Over

Is it only wishful thinking to hope that the earthquake will mark a turning point for the troubled Southern California economy?

Maybe not. History can be reassuring. San Francisco, destroyed by the 1906 earthquake and fire, was built anew by 1909 despite an outbreak of bubonic plague in 1907. It had determination in those days and proclaimed that by holding the Portola Festival in 1906 to symbolize the recovery of the city.

“Overcoming obstacles produces improvisation and vitality in economic life,” says Jane Jacobs, author of “Cities and the Wealth of Nations” and other noted works on urban societies.

But history also can be demanding; cities are renewed by human energy. San Francisco has not recovered with the same vigor from the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake. It has shown a hesitation to take bold action, a slowness to try new methods. “It can’t decide whether it wants to be Carmel or Calcutta,” quips historian Kevin Starr, a former San Francisco resident who now teaches at USC and lives in Los Angeles.

For Los Angeles’ recovery, determination and imagination will be more important than money.

The money will be there. City officials believe that ultimately more than $5 billion in federal aid will flow to reconstruction of highways and buildings and other forms of disaster relief. In Washington, White House plans are for a $2-billion economic recovery package immediately.

Make no mistake, there will be losses. The cost of lives lost and the effect of homes destroyed is incalculable, of course. The measurable economic costs are forbidding: Gov. Pete Wilson estimates the quake’s total costs at $30 billion. Industry estimates so far say that only $2 billion of damaged property was insured. So business people will be faced with tough decisions about investment and rebuilding in a troubled economy; one has to make a profit to repay even low-interest government loans.

Even then, don’t forget all the federal, state and private money that rebuilds damaged highways and structures only brings the economy back to the line of scrimmage. And other costs continue, such as the economic penalty for having sections of the Santa Monica, Golden State and other freeways unusable for more than a year.

Still, rebuilding will create thousands of construction jobs, revitalizing a major industry that has been in recession for four years. Also the economy could get an immediate boost from consumers buying home repair supplies and making purchases postponed during the crisis.

But the real payoffs--and the factors that could determine Los Angeles’ future--will come in new thinking, in the ingenuity and dedication city officials and business people show in turning obstacles into opportunities.

“With 150 school buildings closed indefinitely, possibilities open up for the school district to think of new ways to instruct children, to try new methods,” says Francine Rabinovitz, of Hamilton, Rabinovitz & Alschuler, a Los Angeles public policy consulting firm that has worked with New York’s school district.

“There are opportunities to change the way the city has operated for decades,” says William Ouchi, a UCLA economist who works in the administration of Mayor Richard Riordan. Specifically, says Ouchi, City Hall officials are thinking of unused rail tracks that parallel the Santa Monica Freeway. “With federal help, we could clean up those rails and put transit on them,” he says.

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Serious thought and planning has begun for many transit and commuting innovations to be tried over the coming year, Ouchi reports. Use of telecommuting and flexible hours will continue after the crisis.

Shared jitney cabs, an enlargement of the city’s wide-ranging, entrepreneurial airport shuttle services, is an idea receiving a lot of attention.

“The spread of the Los Angeles area militates against fixed transit routes, but shuttles which can deliver passengers to their door or street could be valuable,” says Paul Curcio, head of the Urban Innovations Group at UCLA.

Greater insurance would be needed for the shuttle entrepreneurs, but the city could help with that. However, there is one hesitation: “Regulations would have to be changed before shuttles could serve as mass public transit vehicles,” Curcio says.

And that’s the kind of test Los Angeles will have to pass if it is to prosper: Will it adapt regulations to meet new circumstances, to build and work anew, or will it be timid and hidebound? It’s a critical question.

Cities do not fail from disasters. After the great fire of 1666, London rebuilt with the inspiration of architect Christopher Wren, who built St. Paul’s Cathedral and many other structures. Chicago had 6,000 temporary shelters thrown up within a week of its great fire in October 1871, and went on to build much more strongly than before.

But cities do fail from within. Ancient Rome died in the century AD 300 to 400, not from defeat in war, but from stagnation as taxes supported a growing mercenary soldiery and civil service, and people moved away to a simpler life on farms. The Visigoths sacked Rome in AD 410.

“We do have a danger of business people moving out. The earthquake could be one more straw on top of over-regulation and bureaucracy,” says a local business leader.

But in the quake’s immediate aftermath, defeat was not the trend. With few exceptions, government agencies and private utilities worked efficiently.

The region’s economy was rising before the earthquake, and business people broadly are prepared to invest anew--especially if reconstruction is carried on with vigor.

Sociologist Jane Jacobs, who is now 77 and lives in Toronto, agrees. She would be surprised if Los Angeles, which she calls one of the great world cities, faded. Cities fail, she says, “when they keep on doing the same thing. Don’t try to restore things as they were; that lacks imagination and leads to stagnation.”

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Los Angeles and Southern California have always come up with innovations for their own needs that are then sent out to others, notes Jacobs. “You’re a semi-desert yet you became a great port; you made products for the movies, and for builders and aircraft. You have skills that didn’t drop from the sky,” she says.

Put another way, it’s no accident that Southern California leads the nation and the world in environmental science and technology. “Solving problems is very good for economies,” says Jacobs. “Never fear, if you come up with useful solutions, they’ll be useful for others, too.”

Determination and imagination, not wishful thinking, built this metropolis--and can rebuild it again. History is reassuring.

“The Persians sacked Athens in 480 BC,” says Kevin Starr, “and after that the Athenians built the Acropolis, the Parthenon and the port city of Piraeus.”

Los Angeles has work to do.