In reference to California’s historical water battles, you often hear the argument that the choice are either that we divert the relatively abundant water of Northern California to Southern California, or that we bring all the people in Southern California up north.
If you think Bay Area rents are bad now…
In all seriousness, though, why did most of the people end up in Southern California, and in L.A. specifically? Wouldnt’ it have made more sense to settle where the water was, not to mention the the excellent natural harbor of San Francisco? And if nearly everyone was going to end up in SoCal, why not San Diego instead of L.A.? At least that city didn’t have to build an artificial harbor.
Conservative Angelenos have been known to say it’s because of all those “librul” San Franciscans and their anti-business politics, but somehow I think that can’t be right.
I recall from history southern California was gaining on the northern half after 1920 when Los Angeles officially overtook San Francisco. It was the great depression that brought a ton of people into the area. That coupled with Hollywood and radio made it look very attractive.
World War II sent southern California over the edge. Both Los Angeles and San Diego took off due to massive war production, and by then it was too late.
Indeed Los Angeles just passed the four million mark in population. Only New York City has ever done that. (San Jose the largest northern city is about 975,000 expected to hit one million before the 2010 census.)
However the growth slowed in the 60s. Early predictions said Los Angeles would pass New York City in population by the year 2000. With the popularity of suburbs this never happened and it’s doubtful any city in the US will reach NYC within 100 years.
In general it was Air Conditioning that allowed the south and the west to take off. Phoenix, which just overtook Philadelphia in population to become the nation’s 5th largest city. Houston is expected to overtake Chicago before 2020 to become the nations 3rd largest city. Houston and especially Phoenix exist because of A/C. A cheap pool of immigrant labor also helps a lot. The northern part of California as well as the north USA is (or was) very unionized.
All this leads to growth. (Population figures refer to city limit populatons NOT the metropolitan areas, which include suburbs)
I don’t know the whole history of LA but Americans have shown that they will pack up and move long distances for better weather as long as the other factors are reasonable. That is a big reason that Florida has grown so much as well as the South and West in general. Every person I have met that packed up and moved to LA from far away has alwayes cited the weather near the top factors. San Francisco constant coolish to chilly weather may be great for some but most people don’t find it ideal.
LA, at one time, was appealing – Mediterranean-type climate year-round, no air pollution, and lots of room. There was enough water (which, I understand, had required maneuvering, but most people probably werenm’t awaere of) for people and for plentiful agriculture (Disneyland was built in the middle of a citrus grove).
Over not a lot of time it got polluted and overcrowded, but by then it was the Big City, and not about to be dethroned.
San Francisco is colder, what with the fog and all, and not as good for growing things. Aside from LA and San Francisco, only San Diego has a good port and all.
LA got film, radio, and TV production (Movie companies liked the warmth and less rain for outdoor production) and a lot of high tech. I think by the time water became a serious issue the city was too heavily ensconced. It had alreadt bled the lifeblood of water from other California communities, and is now looking around for good sources, but the population continues to grow.
Nitpick: One of the biggest reasons LA itself is so huge is entirely arbitrary: political boundaries. LA’s area is twice that of Chicago and nearly ten times that of San Francisco (469 square miles as opposed to 227 and 49, according to Wikipedia). So while yes it is bigger, it’s somewhat of an unfair comparison. Of course, this only applies to the cities themselves, not the greater metropolitan areas.
One thing that hasn’t been mentioned was the car culture that prevailed in the latter half of the last century. After WWII, a car was viewed as a symbol not only of status but of ultimate mobility. Congested cities and subway trains were so Great Depression, and nobody wanted to go back to that! Cars were the future, and a city of the future offered unrestricted access, with open freeways and parking lots for all. LA was just that city, led by a pro-car government (partially in the pocket of GM, but not entirely) ripping out streetcar tracks and building more and bigger roads.
In the mid-50s, when Los Angeles was at the hight of a boom in both roads and population, San Francisco staged the first ever freeway revolt, successfully halting a plan that would have blanketed the city with freeways. Such a move no doubt helped preserve SF for those who loved it and love it still, and in hindsight was almost certainly the right choice, but at the time was viewed as horribly backward: actually get off a nice clear freeway and navigate city streets? Might as well be in a horse-drawn buggy! Of course, LA has since learned the hard way that freeways are not a final solution when it comes to mobility.l
Still, if you come from Chicago, for example, which seems to be the national epicenter of “too hot”/“too cold”, I’d think that San Franciso’s weather would be pretty darn comfortable.
San Francisco is full of San Franciscans. Any rational person would opt for LA in a heartbeat.
Basic geography favored Southern California. There is just to little room around the Bay to house as many people as are in LA. Down here we have/had room to spread out.
I never did understand that part of it; why wouldn’t they have at least wanted to maintain the legacy system of existing rail lines, instead of tearing them all up. Didn’t SF also once have many more street and cable cars than it does now? OTOH, I do like the trolleybuses you have there; quiet and clean running like streetcars, but the fact that they aren’t running on tracks means the driver can maneuver. I don’t know if anyone ever considered trolleybuses for L.A. in the post-rail era. They probably did, but thought the overhead traction lines would be an eyesore. Hah! a little joke.
Don’t you know how Chicago got started?
A bunch of New Yorker were talking and they said, ya know I like the crime, I love the overcrowding, but it just isn’t cold enough here.
A good part of LA’s growth can be traced to the movie industry, the Rose Parade, and the aviation business.
The movie industry allowed people all over the country the beautiful So Cal countryside.
It always seems to be sunny on Jan 1 in Pasadena. Picture you are sitting up to your ass in snow in about 1955 and see the Rose Queen on your new TV. Pack the car Martha, we are outta here!
The early aviation business was quite busy in Southern California. Howard Hughes, Northrop, Lockheed all were So Ca based. When the war came, there were lots of jobs. (yeah planes were built in lots of places, but the headquarters for these companies was in Southern California. After the war, flight test was done at Edwards AFB, so these companies and others hung around.
The San Francisco Earthquake of 1906, and the massive destruction that resulted, also made corporate America quite leery of investing heavily anymore in what had been the largest city in the West.
I didn’t think about this, or the Rose Parade either. The latter seems like a fun little annual event, but I suppose living here we don’t understand the powerful attraction it can exert during that time of year, to those watching back East.
I nearly opened an IMHO thread earier about what it is in people’s cities that seems terribly important to outsiders, but residents not so much. One thing I hear about L.A. is the La Brea Tar Pits. People come here from Europe, and they actually want to see those. While I, though I’m interested in the fossils and the megafauna and all of that, nonetheless consider them somewhat lacking.
Never lived through an actual winter, with snow and freezing winds and shoveling and all that shit, have you? The Rose Parade, besides being the only thing worth watching with a hangover that day, is a reminder that spring is on its way. Eventually.
It’s not just LA, either. My aunt used to live on Vancouver Island, and every February she would phone us and say, “The flowers are coming up! It’s spring and everything’s green!” when we in Ontario were still hauling our butts through ice and snow and -20 temperatures. I think that caused more than one family member to move west. [sub]So why am I still in Toronto?[/sub]
[nitpick]Los Angeles doesn’t have a good natural port. It’s almost entirely artificial and protected by a loooong breakwater, along with the Port of Long Beach. However, you’re right about it’s being a good port since it is one of the largest in the world.[/nitpick].
My father’s family lived in upstate New York for centuries, literally. Back to the 1600s, in the Albany area. About 100 years ago, my great-uncle up and moved to a small town in California called Hollywood. His brother, my grandfather, followed him soon after. I remember in the film Chaplin how the train station looked when Charlie Chaplin arrived there, in the middle of nowhere. It would have looked just like that when my great-uncle and grandfather arrived. I never really knew whey they moved out there. This was before the movie industry picked up. The weather, okay, but lots of places in Southern California had the same weather. Why that specific place – and before it had become famous – I don’t know.
My father grew up there but moved. Said he did not like the earthquakes. That’s why I ended up growing up in Texas, although I was born between the two places.
As someone who lives in L.A. - God, I really, really don’t know why.
Yeah, the weather’s nice. Hollywood is interesting and it’s the reason I came here in the first place. But why anyone else would want to live here (and why people aren’t evacuating in droves) is a mystery to me.
Part of the Freeway revolt was not so bad, but having no Freeway* through *SF to the GG bridge kills quite a few SF residents every year, and adds a half hour+ to the drive. 19th street is a death trap, and a Freeway would have saved at least a hundred lives by now. So now we know that SF values esthetics over human lives. :rolleyes:
SF is also the last city not to have a through freeway every other city was forced into them. SF should have been forced into one also.
