A ‘Megacity’ in Flux : USC Study Finds Southland Rebounding but Still Hindered by Social Problems

Given its sprawl and complexity, Southern California presents tough challenges to anyone seeking to understand the region. But a group of USC professors is giving it a massive try, in hopes of improving life here and providing a model to other cities worldwide.

The resulting report, to be released Tuesday by USC’s new Southern California Studies Center, portrays a region rebounding from recession into greater prominence on the Pacific Rim, but hampered by poverty, juvenile crime, pollution and splintered government. Most of all, the “Atlas of Southern California” urges citizens to view the five-county area as an interconnected “global megacity.”

“In one sense, Southern California is the place where the principal urban dynamics of the contemporary era merge in a giant petri dish,” the report said.

The atlas is the first of what is expected to be an annual USC survey of economic, social, cultural and environmental trends in Los Angeles, Orange, Ventura, San Bernardino and Riverside counties. It will be presented Tuesday morning at a forum called Southern California Scorecard at the Central Library in downtown Los Angeles.

Packed with statistics, charts and descriptive texts, the study by 16 USC faculty members does not offer many concrete recommendations for change. And most of its conclusions will not surprise observant residents who know about the decline of heavy manufacturing and the rise of Latino and Asian immigration over the past decade.

But its sweep of topics and geography is rare, as is its unified collection of data to buttress or challenge conventional wisdom. Funded with $1.5 million from USC for its first three years, the effort touches such disparate topics as international shipping, gang homicide, the number of classical radio stations and property tax limitations.

The goal is to provide an objective guide to “the issues that must be confronted by everyone concerned with our future irrespective of ideology or political persuasion,” said geography professor Michael Dear, director of the Southern California Studies Center. While Los Angeles has become a hot topic among sociologists and pop authors since the 1992 riots, Dear contends that the region remains the least studied major urban area in North America.

Dear said he remains optimistic about the region despite all it troubles.

“Southern California has reinvented itself so frequently during its history, one can’t help but be amazed and impressed,” he said. But Dear’s optimism is muted by the sense that problems must be addressed on a more regional basis.

The authors said that they do not necessarily advocate more regional government but want citizens and officials to focus more on shared interests. As examples, they cited recent coalitions formed to help public bus riders and to preserve the Los Angeles River.

On the economy, the report traced the major job losses in aerospace and manufacturing but cited hopeful trends in the garment and entertainment industries and in international trade.

“Los Angeles is a global capital, a cardinal point on the international compass,” wrote Abraham Lowenthal, the director of USC’s Center for International Studies.

The Los Angles Customs District, including the ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles and Los Angeles International Airport, surpassed New York in 1994 to become the nation’s largest customs district in import dollars, the study said. In 1995, such trade income grew to $164 billion, quadruple what it was 20 years ago even after inflation adjustment.

While wrenching to displaced workers, the changing economy offers some encouragement that air pollution may be reduced further, the USC report suggests.

A chapter on the environment found that some of the region’s most productive and well-paid industries--such as high-technology and entertainment--produce relatively low levels of emissions. Job growth in those areas will provide “encouragement that high environmental standards can be part of effective regional efforts to sustain a desirable quality of life,” the atlas said.

Southern California now is home to more foreign-born residents than any other region of the country, the atlas said. Half of those immigrants have arrived here in the past 10 years.

The report shows that all ethnic groups of immigrants have made progress in working their way out of poverty, including impressive efforts by Latinos who came here as youngsters. Still, in 1995, almost one-fifth of all Southern California residents were living below the federal poverty level and decent, affordable housing was more difficult to find.

Compared to national averages, Southern California children are born healthier but grow up to face more problems of violence, poverty and education, said Jacquelyn McCroskey, associate professor at USC School of Social Work and an official with the Los Angeles County Children’s Planning Council.

Los Angeles teenagers have a higher rate of violent deaths (86 versus 69 per 100,000) than the national average and a higher high school dropout rate (15% versus 9% nationally).

Juliet Ann Musso and Jeffrey I. Chapman, faculty members in the USC School of Public Administration, surveyed the five county and 177 city governments of Southern California and found “a fragmented, even chaotic, local governance structure.”

The authors also warned that cities in Southern California increasingly may follow the widening income gap already evident among families. “It may well be that some cities are facing fiscal constraints to a far greater degree than others, and that this differential is growing. In the future, we may find that cities are grouping into the very stressed and the very rich, with few in between,” the report cautioned.

The region, however, is very rich in cultural assets, according to an atlas chapter by Curtis C. Roseman, USC Department of Geography. New York remains on top, with Southern California a close second, followed by San Francisco, Chicago and Washington-Baltimore in terms of the number of theater groups, classical and ethnic radio stations, library holdings, highly rated restaurants and sports teams.

The picture changes when such assets are divided per capita. If population is considered, then San Francisco, Boston and New York rank highest and the Southern California region falls below Miami, Pittsburgh and Atlanta, the study found.

But the influence of Los Angeles through the overseas export of films, television shows and music, the report’s economic analysis said, gives the region “a presence in the world’s consciousness out of all proportion to the city’s size, its economic weight or its political importance.”

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Scorecard for Southern California

USC’s new Southern California Studies Center is to release a study Tuesday about various aspects of life, culture, the economy and the environment in Los Angeles, Orange, Ventura, San Bernardino and Riverside counties. The center’s scorecard uses traffic light imagery to evaluate 13 subjects. Green signifies healthy progress, yellow means uncertainty and red flashes obvious and deep trouble. Here is a sample.

SECTOR: Crime and Violence

CONDITION: Red

COMMENTS: Some improvement, but still a major detriment.

*

SECTOR: Culture

CONDITION: Green

COMMENTS: Rapidly expanding to keep up with population growth and rising diversity.

*

SECTOR: Economy

CONDITION: Yellow

COMMENTS: Region is a major employment sector, but restructuring has resulted in low-wage jobs.

*

SECTOR: Education

CONDITION: Red

COMMENTS: Public schools are in a long-term crisis.

*

SECTOR: Environment

CONDITION: Yellow

COMMENTS: Notable success in air and water quality, but a challenge to maintain gains.

*

SECTOR: International Links

CONDITION: Green

COMMENTS: Likely to grow in importance as the “Pacific Century” unfolds.