Introduction: California's Growth: An Uncertain Future

I N T R O D U C T I O N California’s Growth: An Uncertain Future BY MICHAEL B. TEITZ Editor's note: This issue of A CCESS is Part 1 of a two-part series about the challenges facing California in the coming years. Look for Part 2 in Fall 2008. F EW THINGS ARE SADDER THAN THE SIGHT OF a friend in the grip of undernourishment, addiction, and delusion. That beloved friend is California— undernourished in what is necessary for its collec- tive health, addicted to the consumption of public services, delusional about the necessity to pay for them. The word “crisis” is used far too frequently in public discourse, but it is hard to avoid the conclusion that California is now facing a serious crisis. The dimensions of that crisis go far beyond the range of the papers in this—and the next—issue of A CCESS : inadequate health care and insurance, a failing K-12 public school system, an under- funded and over-stressed higher education system, a public fiscal system that seems to be in permanent structural deficit with a form of governance full of incentives to keep it that way, and the likelihood of a recession. To all these, we may add the prospect of millions more added to the population, housing prices that are still far above the US median even with the current real estate collapse, insufficient and undermaintained infrastructure, water shortages exacerbated by climate change, and urban development that is of perceptive analyses of California’s problems, nor is there a inefficient and unhealthy. shortage of well-crafted prescriptions for addressing them. Yet there are reasons for optimism. First, throughout its But resilience has its limits. Societies do fail, as Jared history, California has demonstrated enormous resilience in the Diamond so eloquently tells us in his book, Collapse—and they face of great challenges. Earthquakes, fires, drought, robber fail in part because they no longer have the ability or will to barons, economic depressions, wars (at a distance), environmental adapt to change. Resilience in the face of sudden adversity is very devastation (from logging and hydraulic mining), vast sudden different from resilience in response to slow, seemingly remorse- migrations, booms and busts—all have been taken in stride, less changes in a society and its environment. Many states in the absorbed, and somehow transcended. Second, California’s citizens eastern US have long experienced far slower rates of growth and and government have managed to respond creatively to change, much greater loss of key employment sectors than California, albeit finding that sometimes solutions beget more problems. yet, with some exceptions, they have successfully managed the Third, California has been the dynamic source of innovations in transition to a service-based economy. Far less successful have technology and culture that have resulted in entire new industries, been some cities and metropolitan areas within them—consider providing employment and income for millions of people and Buffalo in contrast with Boston. In some cases, the loss of a funda- changing the way the entire world behaves. Fourth, there is no lack mental economic base could not be offset by other means, but ➢ Michael B. Teitz is professor emeritus of city and regional planning at the University of California, Berkeley and a senior fellow at the Public Policy Institute of California (teitz@ppic.org).