By Eric Gray | Now before you criticize, Long Beach will always be Long Beach. We have our own history, sense of self, unique location, and goals but I can’t help but wonder what is in store for us?
As a city, we’ve made a lot of great changes and strides lately. We’ve become bike friendly, foodie friendly, and are the first city in southern California to implement a parklet. Our politics are typically progressive from plastic bag bans, to sustainability efforts and, we have sea lions off the coast of rainbow harbor.
These truths about our city, seem very San Francisco ish to me way more than L.A.-ish. In fact, I no longer think we are in the shadows of LA. We are a real walkable city on the Pacific Ocean and have been attracting our own creative class, Long Beachians if you will, that are helping to bring up the profile of the city with a multitude of innovative ideas. Take WE LABS for instance, a creative co-work space founded in Downtown Long Beach who sought to bring more awareness to the growing tech industry locally. According to WE LABS Operations Director and Co-founder Robbie Brown, they’ve successfully implemented Long Beach Tech Hack Night which brought “people comprising of the Long Beach tech community together to brainstorm, plan, create, and implement a useful resource for tech start-ups in Long Beach.” Here is the map created from scratch that night which showcases locations for tech start-ups in the city: http://map.longbeachtech.org/
Are you convinced yet?
We’ve hosted the TED Conference, Woman’s Conference, Grand Prix, and have a large thriving gay community that hosts one of the largest pride festivals in the country. The groundbreaking has occurred for the new billion-dollar Gerald Desmond Bridge which will showcase not only scenic views of the ocean and towers reaching 500 feet above ground, but bike and pedestrian paths as well.
Yes, we might not be hilly, but we have Signal Hill. So Signal Hill is not officially part of Long Beach but many of us do work and shop there from time to time. Some of our architecture and the caliber of many of our homes rival San Francisco easily.
Long Beach, with amazing weather, is a powerhouse city in our own right. Smart growth is part of our future, residential and business brain power is part of our present, and neglect and deficits are hopefully part of our past.
Onward, ever, upward.