The Western US has long been an innovator in developing the urban form, notably in the creation of suburbanized, multipolar cities. Yet now that model is showing strain, and there’s a fierce debate about how western cities should grow. Watch as the panel explores these issues, from homelessness to high housing prices and the impact of regulation. Read more
For Americans, California once looked like the future. It was a state defined by risk-taking and utopian dreaming. Yet for most Californians today, the upward mobility so central to the state’s ethos is rapidly disappearing. For decades, California was the primary destination for both other Americans and for foreign immigrants. Now, this trend has gone into reverse Read more
The much-celebrated California boom is facing a harsh reality.
Everything was looking good, based on enormous growth in capital gains in tech stocks and property, and some in Sacramento assumed the bounty would last — until it didn’t. The latest bad news is the evaporation of the state budget surplus that is now rapidly turning into a deficit that could run as high as $22 billion to $40 billion, particularly if there’s a recession. Read more
You can always count on California’s progressive contingent to mix lunacy with hypocrisy. The state’s nine-member Reparations Task Force last month recommended large state payments to descendants of slaves, now living in California. Read more
The “left coast” mostly lived up to its name during the midterms, though occasional signs of dissent could be seen. In California, Governor Gavin Newsom won big, and the GOP saw no major statewide successes. California controller candidate Lanhee Chen, the rare Republican endorsed by virtually every major newspaper, barely did better than his hapless GOP running mates in a loss. In Oregon, Christine Drazan failed to make it to the governor’s mansion, despite Portland’s ongoing meltdown and a spirited race. And in Washington, speculation about a closer-than-expected Senate race proved wrong. Read more
Few regions have been more consistently Democratic than the West Coast. Even compared with the Northeast, where Republicans occasionally win governors’ offices, the appropriately named “left coast” has been adamantine in its progressivism. Republicans haven’t won statewide office in California in years; in Oregon, it’s decades. Washington has elected a Republican secretary of state, but she now serves in the Biden administration. And the region’s major cities are overwhelmingly blue.
For much of the 20th century, Los Angeles symbolised the future. Over the course of the century, the population grew 40-fold to nearly four million people.
But now, for the first time in its history, the population of Los Angeles is in decline, falling by 204,000 between July 2020 and July 2021. LA was once a magnet for investors. But recently many of the area’s corporate linchpins – including aerospace giant Northrop Grumman, Occidental Petroleum and Hilton Hotels – have left, taking with them high-paying jobs and philanthropic resources. Read more
California is working overtime to prove something that is obvious to most middle-class Americans: electric vehicle mandates are something of a scam.
A week ago, California announced it would ban the sale of new gas-powered cars by 2035—only to beg residents this week to stop charging their electric cars for fear of breaking the power grid amid a massive heatwave.
Conservatives often see prospective presidential contender Gavin Newsom as a tool of the far Left—and, as such, politically doomed by the seemingly endless crises afflicting California. Yet the Golden State governor is a more formidable candidate than this portrayal suggests. Rather than being a progressive windup doll, the 54-year-old is in fact a skilled political opportunist, with far less dogmatically left-wing views than most of his party’s legislative delegation. He would have no qualms abandoning unpopular progressive stances to pursue the goal of succeeding a doddering President Joe Biden.
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