Connecting the Dots in L.A.

A Harvard University study of several cities finds Los Angeles lacking in community ties and distrustful of strangers. Before we get too down in the dumps about this dubious distinction, let’s remember one thing: Los Angeles was compared with no city like it, because there is no city like it.

Los Angeles sprawls north, south, east and west, uphill and down, across flatlands, through canyons to the ocean--a more varied topography than found in most states. The landscape creates natural boundaries. And Los Angeles is home to the most diverse racial and ethnic mix in the nation.

Dreamers have always moved here. Independent, ambitious and often alone, they cross oceans and state lines, borders and boundaries. Immigrant or U.S. transplant, they have sought better lives. Yes, various groups celebrate “back home,” whether the newcomers came by foot from a town in Mexico or by plane from a town in Iowa. But the preservation of traditions, customs and cuisine need not be threatening. The mix is fundamental to the vitality of this region.

In Los Angeles, there are new stirrings of community. New neighborhood councils, prescribed by charter reform, may break down some boundaries and engage residents in civic life, even if it’s just one pothole at a time. And the city elections April 10 are starting to click in the public consciousness. Thanks to term limits, the city’s most powerful club--its political overseers--is being broken up. Never in the city’s modern history have so many new and old faces met on such a level electoral playing field. Almost all of them are, by necessity, preaching unity, not ethnic politics. No one group dominates. And that’s not bad.

Politics is often blamed for disconnecting citizens from their government, and big-money lobbying too often displaces citizen activism. But with competition for the City Council intense and the mayoral race being contested by up to half a dozen credible candidates, the so-called unconnected Los Angeles may have a hard time staying so. And if our politics fail to bring us together, there are plenty of other things that surely unite us--like our collective inability to drive in even the lightest of rains.