4.6 • 1.7K Ratings
🗓️ 1 September 2023
⏱️ 46 minutes
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The perfect weather and booming economy of the City of Angels has drawn in generations of California dreamers. But now America’s second-largest city is getting smaller—losing both population and businesses. As the Hollywood strike has revealed, the high costs of housing, living and running a business are pushing Angelenos away. Can the city reverse the big shrink? But is a smaller Los Angeles even a problem?
The city’s mayor Karen Bass and a picketing actor lay out the affordability problems facing the city, while Shannon Sedgwick of the Los Angeles County Economics Development Corporation explains what is behind the business exodus. We revisit the city’s past boom days, and Hans Johnson, of the Public Policy Institute of California, explores how to bring them back.
John Prideaux hosts with Charlotte Howard and Idrees Kahloon.
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0:00.0 | The anti-aircraft guns started firing just after 3am. |
0:08.6 | Something had been spotted over Santa Monica, and according to one witness, the air over |
0:14.0 | Los Angeles erupted like a volcano. |
0:18.2 | It was February 1942, and Pearl Harbor had been bombed less than three months before. |
0:24.3 | Now it seemed World War II had come to the city of Angels. |
0:29.4 | Air raids are ensounded, and a full blackout descended. |
0:33.2 | Over 1,400 anti-aircraft shells were fired, five people died from heart attacks or crashes |
0:39.8 | in the dark. |
0:42.0 | But the Japanese bombs never fell. |
0:45.4 | It was a false alarm, the anti-aircraft guns had been firing at an American weather balloon. |
0:51.7 | The Battle of Los Angeles, as it became known, never held any real threat. |
0:56.4 | Now, though, with living costs rising and the population decreasing, there's a different |
1:01.7 | sort of phantom floating over America's dream factory. |
1:06.2 | I'm John Prado, and this is Chex and Balance from the Economist. |
1:12.3 | Each week, we take one big theme, shaping American politics, and explore it in depth. |
1:17.3 | Today, Los Angeles is shrinking. |
1:29.4 | Is that a problem? |
1:39.4 | For generations, Los Angeles' perfect weather and booming economy has drawn in California |
1:44.4 | dreamies. |
1:45.7 | The county's population is larger than that of 40 states. |
1:49.9 | But now America's second city is getting smaller, losing population, and companies. |
1:56.0 | As the Hollywood strikers revealed, the high costs of housing, living, and running |
... |
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