{"id":6106,"date":"2008-03-10T09:55:00","date_gmt":"2008-03-10T09:55:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lbpost.com\/articles\/life\/lb-past-present-and-future\/"},"modified":"2008-03-10T09:55:00","modified_gmt":"2008-03-10T09:55:00","slug":"lb-past-present-and-future","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/hi-lo\/lb-past-present-and-future","title":{"rendered":"LB Past, Present, and Future"},"content":{"rendered":"

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I’m privileged to be able to go through the Leadership Long Beach<\/font><\/a> experience this year.  <\/span>It’s a nine-month leadership development program for a class of thirty people each year, focused on our great city.  <\/span>Even though it seems like we just started, we have only a few more class meetings and are now hard at work on some very interesting class projects (more about the one I’m part of in another post).<\/span><\/p>\n

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At our most recent class meeting, we had some particularly interesting speakers.  <\/span>I truly enjoyed hearing from former Long Beach Mayor Eunice Sato, and from current Long Beach City Manager Pat West.  <\/span>The combination of their remarks left me feeling optimistic about our city’s future, even if there’s a bit of macroeconomic turmoil at the moment.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Mayor Sato spoke about the initiatives she and the city council took to concentrate investment and redevelopment in Long Beach’s downtown in the 1970’s and 1980’s.  <\/span>Of course, we are all reaping the benefits of those efforts today.  <\/span>I was particularly struck by the wisdom of her observation that public investment helps give the private sector the confidence to invest.<\/span><\/p>\n

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While I agree that downtown is one of Long Beach’s greatest assets, Mayor Sato spoke of the need now to invest in all the parts of Long Beach that are not downtown.  <\/span>Happily, this seems to be just the approach being taken by City Manager Pat West, who spoke of so many projects in so many places I truly lost count.  <\/span>Under his leadership, the city is buying up and, in many cases, redeveloping property along our major thoroughfares, helping to eradicate outdated or inappropriate land uses and integrate key institutions – for example, the Pacific Coast Highway Campus of Long Beach City College, or Poly High School – more fully into the city’s landscape.  <\/span>And I personally thanked Pat for those nice white fences enclosing empty sites.  <\/span>They’re so much better than chain link and embody the “broken window” theory that improving the small details of a city can influence public perception and even public optimism.<\/span><\/p>\n

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It’s possible that our city officials will get a boost from federal urban policy in the next administration.  <\/span>On Wednesday I had the chance to attend a symposium at USC based on the recent Brookings Institution report MetroNation<\/font><\/a>, which argues that U.S. metropolitan areas are the engines of this country’s prosperity.  <\/span>I didn’t know that the country’s 100 largest metro areas contain 65% of the country’s population and generate 75% of the gross domestic product.  <\/span>The “Los Angeles-Long Beach-Santa Ana” metro area ranks second (to New York) in the Brookings list.  <\/span>(One of our local challenges is to get Long Beach more often recognized in its own right, not just as a satellite or – eek – suburb of Los Angeles!)<\/span><\/p>\n

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As economic engines, Brookings argues, the nation’s metro areas deserve federal support of investment in innovation, education, redevelopment, and infrastructure.  <\/span>While this represents a shift from past conceptions of the U.S. as an agrarian nation, I agree it’s the right way to look at our future.  <\/span>The team at Brookings seems to be organizing an effective effort to get this message across once our next President is chosen.<\/span><\/p>\n


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