55. Detroit isn't Long Beach
Matt Welch at Reasononline calls out some distinctions between Long Beach at the end of big aerospace in the 1990s and Detroit at the end of General Motors and Chrysler.Although Welch asks why Long Beach isn't Detroit, the two cities aren't really his subject. That's because the two cities don't have much in common.
When the Cold War ended, Long Beach, unlike Detroit, hadn't been hollowed out by 30 years of decline before the collapse of its signature industry. Long Beach was (and is) an appendage to a regional economy larger than aerospace and more diverse than auto manufacturing.
Long Beach is a port town, a beach and convention town, a significantly gay town, an Asian and Filipino immigrant town, and a town with mile after mile of tract houses within its municipal boundaries. Long Beach "? unlike Detroit "? is largely suburban.
Long Beach in its best years wasn't a city anyone fled because of quality of life issues "? unless you regarded having African American, Latino, and Asian neighbors as a quality of life issue. If you left Long Beach for Orange County, it was to be as securely white in your surroundings as your fears demanded.
Welch sees a lesson in the fate of Long Beach following the crackup of McDonnell Douglas and the closure of the Long Beach Naval Shipyard. Long Beach endured the loss of its industrial base without government handouts, so why shouldn't Detroit?
He means the American-owned auto industry, of course, not the city. But what did the city of Long Beach get from the wreckage of its aerospace and Cold War economy?
Long Beach didn't get a bailout, but the city did receive some direct federal assistance, including the former Long Beach Naval Hospital. The city developed the 30-acre site as a retail "power center" with freeway orientation to affluent communities in Orange County. More federal assistance came in less direct ways, mostly though the efforts of then Mayor Beverly O'Neill.
Long Beach also experienced a relatively soft landing, thanks to the booms and bubbles of the past 20 years. Goods movement at the ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles took the place of some manufacturing jobs; port expansion benefitted construction workers and contractors. The Alameda Corridor project pumped $2.4 billion into the regional economy. Light rail and subway transit projects created other jobs.
(Ironically, at least from Reason's libertarian perspective, the main engine of Long Beach's economy "? the Port of Long Beach "? is managed by a government agency, as were the corridor and transit projects.)
Long Beach also benefitted from an era of easy credit that saw a wall of condo towers go up along Ocean Boulevard. An over-heated residential real estate market pumped millions of dollars into the local economy. Redevelopment agency money flowed into downtown retail developments in an attempt to reverse a long history of sales tax revenue stagnation.
But in the process of surviving, Long Beach became much poorer. The city's poverty rate increased significantly through 2004.Crime rates increased too (even as they were decreasing in many of the smaller cities of the southeast county). And free-spending Long Beach acquired a lingering structural deficit that now cuts a $43.3 million hole in the city's $440 million budget.
With the loss of its jets and warships and having pinned its hopes on real estate and retail, Long Beach ended up in deep trouble. More city services are targeted for cuts in 2009-2010. The school system faces its own bleak financial condition. Foreclosures are ratcheting down the neighborhood quality of life. There is a widening social divide between better off east Long Beach and mostly minority west Long Beach. Black, Latino, and Asian gang violence simmers near the surface. A spate of street murders rattled the town last week.
But Welch is right. Long Beach isn't Detroit. And each city is suffering now in its own way.
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