Once Upon a Time, the City of Angels Was Defined by Sprawl, Cars, and Racial Conflict
Now We're Clustering More in the Center, Slowly Gravitating Towards Public Transit, and Finding Ways to Be More Inclusive
People think they know three things about Angelenos and our aspirations. The first is that we want our own space and will embrace sprawl and long commutes to get it. The second flows from the first: that we worship the automobile and the sense of freedom it symbolizes. The third is that although we celebrate “diversity,” we are prone to conflict, particularly along racial and ethnic lines (think of the film Crash or the 1992 riots, which still loom large in the country’s collective memory).
Today, those three things are not …
