Last month, I called attention to a piece Joel Kotkin had in the Wall Street Journal on the decline of the once great city of Los Angeles. Now in the summer issue of City Journal, Joel has a longer version of the piece, entitled "Lost Angeles."
In the City Journal piece, Joel is more specific on the role regulation has played in L.A.'s woes, particularly environmental and labor regulation. Quoting Joel,
"Meantime, business-strangling regulations proliferate. Many of these originate with the environmental movement, which [L.A. Mayor] Villaraigosa and other Democrats count on for political support and media validation...'Our ferocious concentration on the environment and other issues has created a huge potential issue of social justice bigger than we might want to deal with,' [Economist John] Husing says. 'We are telling blue-collar workers here that we don’t want you to have a job.' "
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