Urban Policy

SHANGHAI -- "Most of them are so superbly ugly that they're exciting." That's what Qingyun Ma, dean of the architecture school at USC, told me last Tuesday afternoon when I asked him what he thought of this city's remarkable explosion of skyscrapers. We were in a taxi heading east on the elevated Yan'an Highway, in the heart of the city, continuing a conversation we had started an hour earlier in a conference room at the architecture firm he runs here in the French… more

Sometimes I miss Los Angeles. I live and work smack in the middle of it. But sometimes I still miss it.

I figure I can place the origins of my nostalgia in the year I spent in Madrid, when I was 14. That was when I made Joni Mitchell's Vietnam War-era paean to my home state my personal anthem. Although I can't say I was homesick for family and friends, I sure identified with Mitchell's longing for warmth and refuge in… more

Half of the world’s population now lives in cities, a number that will climb to 75% by the middle of the century. This development marks a radical break in human history, for humanity has until recently been overwhelmingly rural, concerned first and foremost with brute survival.

In “The Communist Manifesto,” Karl Marx referred to “the idiocy of rural life” -- or so the mistranslation goes -- as an enduring problem. In fact, Marx wasn’t talking about “idiocy” at all. Rather, he… more

I don't know about you, but I'm proud of the fact that the most celebrated symbol of our city isn't a statue that was a gift from the French. I also think it's fitting that it isn't burdened with heavy ideology, profound symbolism or deep meaning. Nobody ever accused the Hollywood sign of inspiring high-minded musings about the essence of our city, let alone the exalted mission of our nation. If anything, it evokes a sordid lust for fame and… more

It’s all the suburbs’ fault. You know, everything -- traffic congestion, overweight kids, social alienation. Oh, and lest we forget, global warming and rising energy costs, too.

That latest knock against the burbs has caught on widely. With their multiplying McMansions and exploding Explorers, the burbs are the reason we’re paying so much for gas and heating oil and spewing all those emissions that are heating up the atmosphere --or so a host of urban proponents tells us. It’s time to… more

Mark Paul is an award-winning writer, editor, and policy expert with wide experience in journalism and California state government and politics. He covered California for 24 years, first as Editorial Page Editor and National Editor of the Oakland Tribune, then as Deputy Editorial Page Editor and columnist for… more

Even if you’re only the slightest bit familiar with California’s $30 billion-plus farm economy, you may have heard the lament: urban development is steamrolling the state’s agricultural belt. Every day, bountiful fields surrender to big-box stores, fast-food restaurants, and residential sprawl. More than 100,000 acres were paved over in the Central Valley alone in the 1990s, and experts estimate that nearly 1 million more could vanish within a generation. Today’s Country Mouse is tomorrow’s City Mouse (or, more likely, a… more

At a time when American cities are changing so rapidly--both as centers of our society, as a launch pads for escape to suburbs and exurbs--I thought I'd consult with the man who may be the country's leading expert on urban life, Joel Kotkin, author and Irvine Senior Fellow at the New America Foundation. He’s the subject of this week’s 10 Questions. We talked about the problem with trendiness in cities, what it takes to make a well-managed city, and why… more

Just in case you missed it, last week was National Air Quality Control Week. That explains why the American Lung Assn. released its new study announcing that Los Angeles is still the smog capitol of the United States.

Not exactly a man-bites-dog story, but some Angelenos may recall that we were actually stripped of that title a few years ago when the Environmental Protection Agency crowned Houston the new pollution king. For me, an asthmatic and no friend to smog, that… more

Three years ago, Alejandro Gutierrez got a strange and tantalizing message from Hong Kong. Some McKinsey consultants were putting together a business plan for a big client that wanted to build a small city on the outskirts of Shanghai. But the land, at the marshy eastern tip of a massive, mostly undeveloped island at the mouth of the Yangtze River, was a migratory stop for one of the rarest birds in the world -- the black-faced spoonbill, a gangly… more