Why Has Los Angeles Finally Emerged as the World's Most Important City
It isn’t clear why it has taken so long for Los Angeles to
be seen as the crown jewel of the world’s cities. LA isn’t exactly shy. Most of
the elites of the world come here to play, if not to live. Why have cities like
London, Paris, NY, Hong Kong or Bejing grabbed all the attention.
Could it be that Los Angeles is “newish,” on the world
stage? Might it be that with the LA image dominated by the movie and leisure
industries, it was hard to take the region seriously? Possibly the urban sprawl kept LA from having a skyline or a true downtown.
What might easier to figure out is why LA has emerged in the last
decade to grab the crown. What has happened to this massive urban complex that reaches
from Westlake and Simi to San Juan Capistrano and from Santa Monica to
Riverside over the past 10 years is revolutionary. We aren’t alone. Dallas/Ft
Worth, Houston, Nashville, Charlotte, Atlanta, and Miami are undergoing similar
transformations, but LA had a huge head start and the story is just plain
bigger in every dimension.
They Come to Play
Southern California has always had the rest of planet earth
lapped when it comes to ways to play, and there can be no doubt that this
magnate is still affecting the massive influx of business and people into the
area. While the population may not be growing as fast as some cities or urban
megaplexes, the issue is about space to build, cost of living, and regulations
inhibiting residential construction.
What is happening is that the population influx consists of
middle class and upper middle class workers in media and hi tech. The
outmigration is in workers with lower paid skills fleeing to less expensive
Texas and Phoenix.
It might seem obvious and boring to list them, but truly no
other city has the combination of natural playgrounds like outstanding ocean
beaches, mountains, forests, and deserts, combined with man-made lakes, parks, and
trails for walking, running, biking, and offroading. When combined with 300
days of sunshine and temperatures averaging 70 pretty much year-round with low
humidity, the play factor is unparalleled.
What has changed in the last decade about play? The
facilities just keep getting better. The ocean is cleaner. Smog is basically a
non-issue.
They Come to Visit
Statistics are a funny thing. Los Angeles doesn’t make the
top of any lists on total tourists visiting the area. But something seems wrong
with that. Anyone who has lived in SoCal for more than a few years will have
noticed that the freeways are no longer empty in summer. Twenty years ago commuters
looked forward to a steady thinning of the traffic starting around April and
not picking back up until school started. Not anymore!
Now the freeways are packed in Summer, and not just during
rush hours. It took a little digging to figure out how LA could have fewer
tourists than London or Paris, but as it turns out, the race isn’t even close.
Southern California sees far more tourists than any other area in the world.
The statistical issue was primarily due to Anaheim. If you
look at nights stayed in Los Angeles (the city), LA is not #1 for tourists. But
if you look at the region, the LA area wins, hands down. If you use other
measures than nights stayed, even the city of LA will take the prize. Most who
come to the region and stay in accommodations outside the city in Santa Monica,
Long Beach, Anaheim, or Pasadena, visit many of the attractions in the City of
Los Angeles.
They Come to Learn
A recent Schroders
Global City Index 30 ranks LA as the best city in the world for investment.
LA has ranked high in the past, but Schroders decided to make a minor change in
the way they evaluated cities. They added educational facilities. It has become
obvious that world class cities need world class universities to feed the hi
tech work force in modern urban centers.
No city in the world can claim to providing a better
University system than Los Angeles. With over 70 colleges and universities, and
a similar number of smaller schools and local junior colleges, the availability
for business to tap into these resources is immense.
They Come to Earn
A huge shift of the last decade has been the recognition by
the tech companies of their need for entertainment content. The combination of
this need and the need for college educated workers has turned the LA basin
into a destination for major internet companies. In particular the Silicon
Beach area between Santa Monica and Manhattan Beach, and 10 fwy and Wilshire
Blvd corridors between Silicon Beach and Downtown LA (DTLA) have seen huge
influxes of major headquarters and facilities including Google, Microsoft,
YouTube, Facebook, Snapchat, and many others.
With these have come thousands of startups to service these
larger companies and their employees. The entire region has enjoyed (or not) a
gentrification of old neighborhoods like Santa Monica, DTLA, Venice, and Mar
Vista, into resplendent hip neighborhoods. DTLA is unrecognizable. Twenty years
ago it was shabby and unwalkable. Now most of the neighborhoods in the central
city are revitalized and safe to walk, even at night.
They Come to Mature
While LA has been recognized for decades as the place where
new culture starts, many would also say that it was the headquarters of the
vast cultural wasteland. Unsurprisingly for a city of this size, LA has had
excellent museums, theater venues, and other evidences of culture. But no one
would have compared Los Angeles to NY or Paris on the culture scale.
What a difference a decade or so makes. Starting with the
museums, just the massive Getty undertaking alone moved LA into the running for
cultural capital of the world. More recently the arts district in DTLA has
added one amazing museum after another, topped by the Broad and MOCA’s Geffen,
the story gets way interesting. Now add in the massive upgrades and additions
to LACMA and the complete renovation of the Huntington Library. Finally, there
are 100’s of smaller museums including the Getty Villa, The Pasadena Museum of
California Art, and the Fowler. Almost every small city has a museum dealing
with the local culture.
Then there is music. There should be no surprise that the
city would venerate music, but because the city is so huge, there has never
been a concentration of music venues. Even today it can be hard to search the
web and find the offerings of chamber music, symphony, opera, light opera, and
classical jazz that are being played all over the city. Their marketing could
use some help. But the reality is that there is music everywhere if you can
find it. And nowhere else can you find the number of venues offering the up and
coming singers and bands. If many new talents head to Nashville or New Orleans,
many more are already here or come here.
Whatever your taste in music, it is playing in LA if you
take the time to track it down.
They Come to Watch
LA has always been a great sports town with UCLA basketball,
USC football, and Dodgers baseball all iconic symbols of their sports. But with
a new football stadium and possibly a new hockey stadium coming to Inglewood,
SoCal may be able to lay claim to being the sports capital of the world.
The stadiums alone will speak to that positioning. The Rose
Bowl, The Coliseum, Dodger Stadium in Chaves Ravine, The Forum, The Staples
Center, and the new Ram’s stadium, not to mention Stub Hub Stadium, the Honda
Center, and Angels Stadium would clearly make the Southland the metro area with
the most major stadiums in the world.
With two Major League teams in baseball, basketball,
football, and hockey, LA ties NYC for the most franchises, but when you add USC
and UCLA as there is no doubt that Los Angeles gets the overall crown. Soccer?
LA will have two teams as of 2018.
They Come to Complain
So what would keep LA from the top slot of cities anywhere
on earth? The traffic? Have you tried to drive in NYC or London? The prices? LA
is still cheaper than any of the other world class cities. The Crime? It is a
little known fact, but current crime levels in Los Angeles are similar to the
1950’s.
The biggest issue – there are just too many people. This
reminds one of the Yogi Berra quip – “No one goes there nowadays, it’s too
crowded.”
Investment
Opportunities
As noted above, LA is ranked as the number one city in the
world for investment. If you are considering buying a home, condo, duplex,
small apartment building, or any other type of residential real estate in theLos Angeles area, you will need an experienced and knowledgeable realtor to
help you find the perfect property, then help you with negotiations and all the
paper work.
Belle Tsai is the perfect choice. She has been actively
dealing with West Los Angeles real estate issues for her entire adult life.
Call Belle today at 310.738,7118
Belle Tsai - Sotheby's International Realty15308 Sunset Blvd.
Pacific Palisades CA. 90272
310.738.7118
CalBRE# 01841341
SIR CalBRE# 899496
