.webp)
In Southern L.A., These Cities Are Making a Comeback
The key is governance and a strong local focus.
Like many older industrial towns, Paramount, a mostly Latino city of 50,000 located 18 miles southeast of downtown Los Angeles, has been through hard times. In 1981, the Rand Corporation described it as “an urban disaster area.” In 2015, it was named among the worst cities in America, based on 22 measures of affordability, economics, education, health, and quality of life. In 2019, Business Insider ranked it near the bottom along with several other nearby cities. Founded as a largely agricultural community in 1948, the city eventually transformed itself into a manufacturing hub but was then devastated in the 1980s as aerospace and car companies exited.
Yet today, walking along Paramount Boulevard, one sees not broken-down storefronts but a thriving downtown, full of attractive restaurants and shops. The city has adopted a “broken windows” approach to policing. While crime rates remain above average for the state, they have been trending down. Homicides, down two-thirds from 1990s levels, are well below the L.A. city average and almost half of those in nearby South L.A. neighborhoods. Paramount has also gotten its city finances on a more solid footing than those of its peers. Whereas L.A. was flirting with huge deficits even before the wildfires, Paramount maintained budget surpluses over the past decade.
Perhaps even more remarkable, one sees no signs of the homelessness, graffiti, and urban disorder that’s so common throughout Southern California—a remarkable shift from conditions just a decade or two ago. “In places like Paramount people get things done because that’s where they live,” says former Paramount city manager Pat West. “In L.A., they have meetings.”
Pursuit of Happiness
Estimating the Productivity of Community Colleges in Paving the Road To Four-Year College Success
Despite a relatively rich literature on the community college pathway, the research base on the quality differences between these institutions has been decidedly thin.
.webp)
‘American Oasis’ Review: The Lure of the Desert
The Southwest has recently sent left-leaning senators to Washington. As more minorities move there, the region might shift to the right.
.webp)
California’s Population Bump Won’t Make Up for Its Long Term Slide
People are leaving, or not coming to California, for rational reasons — and most of them are economic.
.webp)
.webp)
The Civis in Civic Architecture
A return to the old ways, to traditional and classical architecture, is a return to order, a return of the citizen as the measure of a structure, of an institution.
