DBAHC: Make Los Angeles the second city of the USA

[SinghKing]

IOTL, Los Angeles isn't really a major city- only the ninth largest in the USA, and not even the largest city in California, with a total population of only 1.31M. As such, your challenge, should you choose to accept it, is to create an ATL with a POD after 1900 where Los Angeles becomes the second most populous city in the USA. Extra bonus points are on offer if Los Angeles' metropolitan area also becomes the second largest in the USA ITTL, if its metropolitan population exceeds 10M (qualifying it as a mega-city), and if TTL's Los Angeles manages to break into the top ten on the Global Cities Index. Up for the challenge?

OOC: The POD between TTL and OTL is that the Los Angeles Aqueduct project takes a lot longer to gain sufficient funding through bonds; its construction is delayed by ten years as a result, and due to the Great Depression only a year later, they're forced to abandon its construction- the construction of the Los Angeles Aqueduct is only eventually resumed and completed, incurring a far greater expense, in the mid-1940s ITTL.

 

[kclcmdr]

You would need water. A lot of clean water.
Either build lots of resovoirs or desalination plants so that the city can expand.

Then create either a manufacturing industry or electronics corp. so that folks can have jobs.

 

[SinghKing]

You would need water. A lot of clean water.
Either build lots of resovoirs or desalination plants so that the city can expand.

Then create either a manufacturing industry or electronics corp. so that folks can have jobs.

The thing with Southern California is that there isn't really any spare clean water to go around. I guess desalination could potentially work- after all, Los Angeles is still wetter than Phoenix, and it's a coastal city as well. But just like Phoenix, you'd need a huge investment to make it work, a massive and immensely expensive aqueduct system to get the water all the way there from the Colorado River (if there's somehow enough water to spare that far downriver- perhaps by averting the construction of the Hoover Dam?), and it'd only get off the blocks pretty late, in the 1960s at the earliest. Even then, I don't think it'd be enough to support Los Angeles' city and metropolitan populations becoming any larger than those of Phoenix (1.5M and 4.5M respectively) IOTL- not enough to take it up past 5th spot by the present day.

 

[TheHipster57]

Have the us own Baja californa so it can be better connected to the pafcic desantixation and after that you have to industrialize California ten times more than it is today and maybe after Both the world wars have it to where immigrants flock flock to the west coast after the war from euroupe Asian and South America and Africa and if you can give it a population of around 6 million it works out just fine with more money and happy people you could have it. Even outgrow New York if enough people go there

 

[SinghKing]

Have the us own Baja californa so it can be better connected to the pafcic desantixation and after that you have to industrialize California ten times more than it is today and maybe after Both the world wars have it to where immigrants flock flock to the west coast after the war from euroupe Asian and South America and Africa and if you can give it a population of around 6 million it works out just fine with more money and happy people you could have it. Even outgrow New York if enough people go there

Er- not sure that the USA seizing Baja California's all that plausible with a POD after 1900. Although, maybe if the Zimmerman Telegraph wasn't intercepted, and the Mexicans were insane enough to enter WW1 on the side of the Central Powers, the US may well be able to acquire Baja California, maybe even Sonora as well... But even if this did somehow miraculously happen in an ATL, it wouldn't serve to increase Los Angeles' population growth or regional importance at all. In fact, IMHO, it'd only diminish it.

After all, San Diego's already practially as populous and wealthy as Los Angeles is IOTL (indeed, San Diego's population's projected to overtake that of Los Angeles in the next two years), and given its far more advantageous location, it'd benefit to a far greater degree than Los Angeles ever would- if Baja California were added to the USA, then Tijuana would inevitably become part of the city of San Diego. And even IOTL, the population of the San Diego-Tijuana conurbation today already exceeds that of Chicago. If Baja California was US territory, then the expanded city of San Diego would already be the USA's second city. If this were to happen in an ATL, there'd be no way that Los Angeles could ever hope to compete with the population of an expanded San Diego.

 

[Dunning Kruger]

Had the major film and entertainment companies moved their production there during the early 20th century it might have helped. But they wanted to be closer to New York and went to Florida instead.

 

[Kaiser K]

I had heard rumors that some New York movie studios had considered moving out to LA in the 1920's to take advantage of the Mojave for Cowboy Movies, but ultimately decided to stay in New York while some moved to Florida. Would that have any effect on LA at all if a movie studio say moved out west?

 

[SinghKing]

Had the major film and entertainment companies moved their production there during the early 20th century it might have helped. But they wanted to be closer to New York and went to Florida instead.

I had heard rumors that some New York movie studios had considered moving out to LA in the 1920's to take advantage of the Mojave for Cowboy Movies, but ultimately decided to stay in New York while some moved to Florida. Would that have any effect on LA at all if a movie studio say moved out west?

OOC: Aw man, double ninja posts... BTW, I'd kind of planned to have the US film industry located in California, but in the San Francisco Bay Area instead, with San Mateo becoming TTL's equivalent of Hollywood, and the city of San Francisco being expanded by annexing the entirety of OTL's San Mateo County (resulting in San Francisco retaining its place as the largest city in California ITTL). What do you guys think? Whose option should we go with?

 

[Escape Zeppelin]

Well San Francisco is the largest city and busiest port on the west coast. If you could somehow shut down the harbor for a few years it would force traffic to the next best port between there and San Diego which would be Los Angeles. By the time San Fran recovered LA would have all new port facilities and businesses. You'd have to do something absolutely insane though to shut down traffic through the Golden Gate. Maybe an earthquake destroys the city around the turn of the century?

 

[SinghKing]

Well San Francisco is the largest city and busiest port on the west coast. If you could somehow shut down the harbor for a few years it would force traffic to the next best port between there and San Diego which would be Los Angeles. By the time San Fran recovered LA would have all new port facilities and businesses. You'd have to do something absolutely insane though to shut down traffic through the Golden Gate. Maybe an earthquake destroys the city around the turn of the century?

OOC: Geological divergences are ASB, remember? The San Francisco Earthquake still happens ITTL, there's no way to avoid that (without drawing the ire of CalBear). But in lieu of the intensive development which Los Angeles and Hollywood were going through at this time (thanks to the newly constructed Los Angeles Aqueduct IOTL, which doesn't yet exist ITTL), it'd be plausible that the rapid rebuilding of San Francisco and Northern California, which was performed on a grand scale thanks to the influential San Francisco Planning and Urban Research Association IOTL and ITTL, could draws the film producers in and incline them to relocate their studios there instead. Especially given the far larger and wealthier audiences in the short term, and increased availability of decently affordable real estate in this region in the aftermath of the quake...

 

[CthulhuFhtagn]

I just can't see LA surpassing Chicago, or even Houston. LA's out in the middle of the desert, what could it have to become the second city?

 

[Dunning Kruger]

OOC: Aw man, double ninja posts... BTW, I'd kind of planned to have the US film industry located in California, but in the San Francisco Bay Area instead, with San Mateo becoming TTL's equivalent of Hollywood, and the city of San Francisco being expanded by annexing the entirety of OTL's San Mateo County (resulting in San Francisco retaining its place as the largest city in California ITTL). What do you guys think? Whose option should we go with?

SF and San Mateo county get you to about 1.4mm barely surpassing the TTL LA of 1.3mm. The big advantage LA has is space. SF and San Mateo county are tight constrained by not just the water but the mountains along the coast. Now get a mega bay area which includes San Jose, Oakland, Berkeley and the like and now you get closer to 4 or 5 million.

One way to get LA to be smaller, break it up where San Fernando becomes its own city.

 

[Kaiser K]

OOC: Aw man, double ninja posts... BTW, I'd kind of planned to have the US film industry located in California, but in the San Francisco Bay Area instead, with San Mateo becoming TTL's equivalent of Hollywood, and the city of San Francisco being expanded by annexing the entirety of OTL's San Mateo County (resulting in San Francisco retaining its place as the largest city in California ITTL). What do you guys think? Whose option should we go with?

OOC: Just stay with what's already been said I think.

 

[The Uchronian]

IOTL, Los Angeles isn't really a major city- only the ninth largest in the USA, and not even the largest city in California, with a total population of only 1.31M. As such, your challenge, should you choose to accept it, is to create an ATL with a POD after 1900 where Los Angeles becomes the second most populous city in the USA. Extra bonus points are on offer if Los Angeles' metropolitan area also becomes the second largest in the USA ITTL, if its metropolitan population exceeds 10M (qualifying it as a mega-city), and if TTL's Los Angeles manages to break into the top ten on the Global Cities Index. Up for the challenge?

OOC: The POD between TTL and OTL is that the Los Angeles Aqueduct project takes a lot longer to gain sufficient funding through bonds; its construction is delayed by ten years as a result, and due to the Great Depression only a year later, they're forced to abandon its construction- the construction of the Los Angeles Aqueduct is only eventually resumed and completed, incurring a far greater expense, in the mid-1940s ITTL.

Well, firstly, making it to where San Fernando never becomes independent from the city might help.....but perhaps preventing the bureaucratic screwups that lead to the delay of the Aqueduct is the real key.

I had heard rumors that some New York movie studios had considered moving out to LA in the 1920's to take advantage of the Mojave for Cowboy Movies, but ultimately decided to stay in New York while some moved to Florida. Would that have any effect on LA at all if a movie studio say moved out west?

It was the money that ultimately decided it, especially Thomas Edison's; of course, it ended up being a monumentally foolhardy decision, especially with the Jacksonville race riots in '63, and Hurricane Helena devastating much of Duval County and south Georgia in '77.....but by then, all the infrastructure was already in place.

OOC: Yeah....frankly, I can't see L.A. going below 1.5-1.6 million or so at the very lowest without breaking off some or even most of the San Fernando Valley.

 

[Kaiser K]

It was the money that ultimately decided it, especially Thomas Edison's; of course, it ended up being a monumentally foolhardy decision, especially with the Jacksonville race riots in '63, and Hurricane Helena devastating much of Duval County and south Georgia in '77.....but by then, all the infrastructure was already in place.

OOC: Yeah....frankly, I can't see L.A. going below 1.5-1.6 million or so at the very lowest without breaking off some or even most of the San Fernando Valley.

Definitely, Jacksonville's movie industry while still prospering to an extent is suffering because of the deteriorating conditions while New York continues to thrive in spite of the increasingly cramp space.

It would have been a much better decision to move out to LA, a lot of untapped potential there.

 

[SinghKing]

SF and San Mateo county get you to about 1.4mm barely surpassing the TTL LA of 1.3mm. The big advantage LA has is space. SF and San Mateo county are tight constrained by not just the water but the mountains along the coast. Now get a mega bay area which includes San Jose, Oakland, Berkeley and the like and now you get closer to 4 or 5 million.

One way to get LA to be smaller, break it up where San Fernando becomes its own city.

OOC: That'd be assuming that the populations of SF and San Mateo County would remain the same as they are IOTL, and wouldn't experience any additional population growth (i.e, would still shrink) in spite of becoming the center of the film industry ITTL, which is some seriously flawed thinking.

 

[SinghKing]

Well, firstly, making it to where San Fernando never becomes independent from the city might help.....but perhaps preventing the bureaucratic screwups that lead to the delay of the Aqueduct is the real key.

San Fernando was never part of the city of Los Angeles. Unless you're talking about San Fernando County- in which case, that could help to get more of the southern cities in OTL's San Fernando County to become part of Los Angeles, as urban sprawl starts to play a role. For that though, I'd argue that further expansion southwards could be your best bet- keep the railroad going, expand the Pacific Electric Railway, and you could potentially have the entirety of Orange County becoming part of the city of Los Angeles ITTL, which should be enough to do it even without the Los Angeles Aqueduct.

It was the money that ultimately decided it, especially Thomas Edison's; of course, it ended up being a monumentally foolhardy decision, especially with the Jacksonville race riots in '63, and Hurricane Helena devastating much of Duval County and south Georgia in '77.....but by then, all the infrastructure was already in place.

OOC: Yeah....frankly, I can't see L.A. going below 1.5-1.6 million or so at the very lowest without breaking off some or even most of the San Fernando Valley.

OOC: Well, how would Los Angeles have been capable of expanding into the San Fernando Valley in the first place without the Los Angeles Aqueduct? IOTL, the San Fernando Valley farmers offered to buy the surplus aqueduct water, but the federal legislation that enabled the construction of the aqueduct prohibited Los Angeles from selling the water outside of the city limits- this was the deciding factor which drove several independent towns surrounding Los Angeles to vote on and eventually approve annexation to the city, because they were forced to do so in order to connect to the municipal water system. These rural areas became part of the city of Los Angeles in 1915 IOTL- but without the Los Angeles Aqueduct, they'd have had to turn to other sources for their water, with most of them turning to the city of San Fernando's abundant groundwater instead (expanding the size and population of the city of San Fernando significantly, and keeping the San Fernando Valley as a separate metropolitan area), and most of the others withering away and dying to become ghost towns before the Los Angeles Aqueduct's eventual completion in the mid-40s.

 

[Up The Creek]

Don't you think LA would run into the same problem the Salt Lake City/Provo/Ogden metro with smog? The winds come off the water and get trapped in the mountains.

 

[SinghKing]

Don't you think LA would run into the same problem the Salt Lake City/Provo/Ogden metro with smog? The winds come off the water and get trapped in the mountains.

Not really, unless we went with the expansion northwards into San Fernando County, over the Santa Monica Mountains. Another reason why the expansion of Los Angeles into Orange County seems the more plausible option IMHO.