Economist.com Cities Guide: Los Angeles Briefing - July 2006

News this month

Could do better

Los Angeles prides itself on being one of the most diverse cities in the world. So it is surprising that of the 4,852 new students due to start at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) in the autumn, a mere 96—fewer than 2%—are African-Americans. That figure, 20 fewer than last year’s intake, is the lowest since 1973, at a university that counts such luminaries as Ralph Bunche and Jackie Robinson among its black alumni. No wonder Albert Carnesale, the outgoing chancellor, describes the news as “a great disappointment”. Both Berkeley and the University of Southern California have proportionately more black students.

What is true for black students applies to all minority groups: blacks, Latinos and American Indians will make up just 15.9% of new students in 2006, compared with 18.1% in 2005. One explanation is California’s Proposition 209, which was passed in 1996 and forbids affirmative action on the basis of race or sex. Another explanation is that because diversity is the goal of most universities, talented black Angelenos find themselves being wooed—not least with generous scholarships—by elite establishments such as Harvard and Princeton.

Flying squad

Los Angeles International Airport is big enough to have its own 400-strong police force, which co-operates not just with immigration agents and Transportation Security Agency officers but also with 59 officers assigned by the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD). Whether it makes sense to have two different police forces working the same vulnerable patch is a moot point. (LA’s voters last year voted down a measure to combine the two.) A more pressing issue, as outlined by a bill now passing through the state legislature in Sacramento, is whether airport police should have LAPD-like powers.

At the moment, for instance, they are not authorised to seize explosives or use them to train bomb-sniffing dogs. Despite political pressure, William Bratton, chief of the LAPD, champions the status quo, claiming the airport police are simply not qualified to have such powers. Mr Bratton is LA’s most effective police chief in decades, but he may lose this particular battle: immediately after he stated his position, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa publicly praised the competence of the airport police.

Trouble in the schools

Bad news and the Los Angeles Unified School District—the second biggest in the country, with some 727,000 students—go together all too often. On June 5th a fight between black and Latino pupils at Venice High School resulted in the fatal shooting of a 17-year-old Latino student. Racial violence in LA’s public schools, where Latinos now vastly outnumber blacks, is nothing new: indeed, shortly after his election last year Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa’s visit to Jefferson High School was marred in front of the cameras by a continuing fight between blacks and Latinos. How to stop the violence is a vexed question. One proposal favoured by the mayor (who hopes to take control of the school system from the elected school board) is to reduce the size of schools to around 500-600 students each. Venice High School, for example, has over 3,000 students—and more students means more neighbourhood gangs, whether Latino, black or inter-racial.

City farm

Hollywood stars don't always have it their way. Daryl Hannah, Danny Glover and Martin Sheen were among those unable to save a rural oasis in the middle of South Central LA, one of the poorest parts of the city. Campaigners demonstrated for weeks to save a 14-acre farm at 41st and Alameda Street, which provides food and fresh flowers for some 360 families. The City of LA compulsorily acquired the land in the late 1980s for a waste incinerator that was never built, then set it aside as a community garden after the riots of 1992, which devastated much of South Central.

Unhappily for the self-styled “South Central Farmers”, in late 2003 the city sold the land back to the previous owner, Ralph Horowitz—who decided to evict the farmers and erect a warehouse, which many argue would provide jobs for the poor locals. This led to a two-year legal wrangle, with the farmers disputing the city’s right to transfer the land, and then a dawn raid by the police on June 13th to evict them. The farmers had hoped that the blitz of publicity (Joan Baez had sung in their favour and Ms Hannah had perched for weeks in a walnut tree) would either raise enough money to buy out the developers or would embarrass the mayor’s office into finding a solution. But despite an offer from the Trust for Public Land and the Annenberg Foundation to meet Mr Horowitz’s asking price of $16.3m, he now refuses to sell, complaining of anti-Semitic insults from the protesters. Meanwhile, Mayor Villaraigosa says farmers will be relocated to a 7.8-acre site in another deprived location at 111th Street and Avalon, and the city has identified another 100 plots that could be used as community gardens.

No apology

The LAPD brags that with 17 helicopters and one aeroplane it has “the largest municipal airborne law enforcement operation in the world”. In traffic-clogged LA, this is proving a boon to William Bratton, the police chief. In the past 18 months he has used the police air force 29 times to get him to places as far away as Sacramento and Las Vegas, but also to events within the LA region. All this, says the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association, a tax-fighting organisation, is a misuse of public money (the LAPD does not keep track of the total cost, but does say that the cost of operating a helicopter is around $400 an hour).

Mr Bratton, who notes that he is usually accompanied by fellow officers, is absolutely unapologetic. He told the Los Angeles Times: “The size of the city, the amount of traffic and the demand on my schedule make the aircraft a cost-effective, practical solution to staying in touch and making myself more accessible.” A Hollywood studio boss could hardly have put it better.

Catch if you can

July 2006

David Hockney Portraits

Until September 4th 2006

Los Angeles can feel like a city of transplants, so it is fitting that its most famous artist is David Hockney, a Brit who has made LA his sometime home for the past 40 years. The city has seen plenty of exhibitions of Mr Hockney’s work, notably at the LA Louver gallery, but a show at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) offers a new look at the artist. Rather than present Mr Hockney’s well known landscapes, this exhibit is devoted to his portraits. The paintings of his family, friends and lovers give fascinating insight into the artist’s life. One bonus of the LACMA exhibition, organised with London’s National Portrait Gallery and Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts, is its use of Mr Hockney’s photographic albums, which he used to jog his memory while working on his portraits.

Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 5905 Wilshire Boulevard. Tel: +1 (323) 857-6000. Open Mon, Tues, Thurs noon-8pm; Fri noon-9pm; Sat-Sun 11am-8pm. Entry: $15 for exhibition, $9 for museum. For more information, visit the museum’s website.

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