Looking for Leaders to Govern a World City

I want to make note of the excellent May 2 editorial on street gangs, “No More Duck and Cover.” At its conclusion, I could not help but recall John Balzar’s May 1 commentary, “Too Many Officials, No Leaders,” on the ungovernable nature of overgrown L.A. communities and their problems. It was one of the best, most directly applicable columns ever printed in The Times. It is just as applicable to the street gang editorial as it is to the San Fernando Valley secession movement. As Balzar states, it takes more than housing tracts and shopping centers to make cohesive, self-governing communities.

Unfortunately, most of California has just grown without attention to what is really required to govern.

Daniel Eliason

Santa Barbara

*

Some people say that Los Angeles is too large to govern effectively. While our population has swelled to 3.7 million, our geographical boundaries have remained basically the same for 90 years. Clearly we could govern ourselves back then when we were a physically large city, so it’s not a matter of surface area.

Maybe it’s population? I don’t think so. Whether we like it or not, our young city is a world city and should be compared with other world cities. We are tiny compared with New York’s nearly 8 million and London’s 7 million, and on par with Berlin’s 3.5-million inhabitants. They have been effectively governed for hundreds of years, and we can do it as well.

Paul Meyers

Los Angeles