( Slymar Earthquake )
The 1970s and 1980s saw the end of the boom years for Los Angeles and the beginning of a period of painful maturation. As if to herald bad times to come, the destructive Sylmar Earthquake of 1971 took 64 lives and caused more than $500 million in property damage.
In the 1970s population growth tapered off, as most suitable land in the region had finally been covered with an unbroken sprawl of urban development.
Millions of automobiles and trucks on the city’s freeways created the worst smog in the nation.
The city's major automobile and rubber plants in the San Fernando Valley, Inglewood, and South Central Los Angeles closed their doors under pressure from overseas competition, taking away the best blue-collar jobs. However, these industrial zones were eventually converted to light industries such as food processing and the production of aluminum wheels and clothing.
A similar shift occurred in other parts of the city, as the economy shifted from heavy to light industries.
In the 1980s Los Angeles became the leading garment manufacturing center in North America. Similar transformations characterized the 1970s and 1980s, as the city’s economy shifted from heavy to light industries.
The restructuring of the Los Angeles economy coincided with another massive demographic transformation.
Reforms in U.S. immigration policy opened the doors for a flood of immigrants from Latin America and Asia. Many were motivated by economic opportunities and were willing to take low-paying jobs; others were Southeast Asian and Central American political refugees, often with decent education but inadequate language skills.
The stream of immigrants from Mexico was especially large. In little more than a decade Los Angeles became a multicultural metropolis, a truly global city. Population growth thereby increased again, reaching 9.4 million in Los Angeles County by 1990, of which non-Hispanic whites now constituted a minority.
A recession in the early 1990s helped fuel tensions once again. In April 1992 a terrible urban riot broke out at the intersection of Florence and Normandie streets in South Central Los Angeles.
This riot was sparked by the news that four police officers accused of beating African American motorist Rodney King (a beating in 1991 that had been recorded on home video and shown worldwide) had been acquitted by an all-white jury in nearby suburban Simi Valley.
Lasting several days, the riot cost about 55 lives and caused 2,300 serious injuries and $735 million in property damage. This riot broke with the pattern of the 1965 Watts Riot and other U.S. race riots of the 1960s through the 1980s: It was not confined to the poor, minority neighborhoods, but spread throughout the metropolis, and it was also a multiracial riot.
Immigrant Latinos were widely perceived by African Americans as competitors for jobs, and Korean merchants were targeted for alleged job discrimination. Although African American youths were prominent at the beginning, Latinos also participated in the rioting. Of the thousands arrested, 51 percent were Latino and 36 percent were African American.
( Northridge Earthquake )
Another kind of disaster struck Los Angeles in January 1994, when an early morning earthquake rocked the city. The quake measured 6.7 on the Richter scale and was centered in Northridge, in the San Fernando Valley. The Northridge earthquake caused 61 deaths—a miraculously low number thanks to the timing of the quake—6,500 serious injuries, and a staggering $20 billion in property damage. It left 20,000 people homeless and temporarily shut down the freeway system due to major bridge collapses.
After the 1992 riot and 1994 Northridge earthquake, Los Angeles began a rapid recovery. The economy bounced back, relieving social tensions, if not solving the social problems that underlay the riot. Rapid reconstruction of the freeway system restored optimism among the city's millions of commuters.
Over the course of the late 1990s, social tensions decreased and a new boom in major civic construction began. Los Angeles massively revised its city charter in 1999 to provide greater accountability and give neighborhoods a greater voice.
In 2005 Los Angeles elected its first Hispanic mayor in more than 100 years. City councilman Antonio Villaraigosa, a Mexican American, fashioned a broad coalition that included Asians, blacks, Latinos, and whites. He won about 59 percent of the vote in what some political observers called the city’s first successful coalition between black and Latino voters.
Villaraigosa is a Democrat with a liberal background as a former teachers’ union organizer and a past president of the American Civil Liberties Union in Southern California. He was expected to focus on improving the city’s schools and mass transit system.
In the 1970s population growth tapered off, as most suitable land in the region had finally been covered with an unbroken sprawl of urban development.
Millions of automobiles and trucks on the city’s freeways created the worst smog in the nation.
The city's major automobile and rubber plants in the San Fernando Valley, Inglewood, and South Central Los Angeles closed their doors under pressure from overseas competition, taking away the best blue-collar jobs. However, these industrial zones were eventually converted to light industries such as food processing and the production of aluminum wheels and clothing.
A similar shift occurred in other parts of the city, as the economy shifted from heavy to light industries.
In the 1980s Los Angeles became the leading garment manufacturing center in North America. Similar transformations characterized the 1970s and 1980s, as the city’s economy shifted from heavy to light industries.
The restructuring of the Los Angeles economy coincided with another massive demographic transformation.
Reforms in U.S. immigration policy opened the doors for a flood of immigrants from Latin America and Asia. Many were motivated by economic opportunities and were willing to take low-paying jobs; others were Southeast Asian and Central American political refugees, often with decent education but inadequate language skills.
The stream of immigrants from Mexico was especially large. In little more than a decade Los Angeles became a multicultural metropolis, a truly global city. Population growth thereby increased again, reaching 9.4 million in Los Angeles County by 1990, of which non-Hispanic whites now constituted a minority.
A recession in the early 1990s helped fuel tensions once again. In April 1992 a terrible urban riot broke out at the intersection of Florence and Normandie streets in South Central Los Angeles.
This riot was sparked by the news that four police officers accused of beating African American motorist Rodney King (a beating in 1991 that had been recorded on home video and shown worldwide) had been acquitted by an all-white jury in nearby suburban Simi Valley.
Lasting several days, the riot cost about 55 lives and caused 2,300 serious injuries and $735 million in property damage. This riot broke with the pattern of the 1965 Watts Riot and other U.S. race riots of the 1960s through the 1980s: It was not confined to the poor, minority neighborhoods, but spread throughout the metropolis, and it was also a multiracial riot.
Immigrant Latinos were widely perceived by African Americans as competitors for jobs, and Korean merchants were targeted for alleged job discrimination. Although African American youths were prominent at the beginning, Latinos also participated in the rioting. Of the thousands arrested, 51 percent were Latino and 36 percent were African American.
( Northridge Earthquake )Another kind of disaster struck Los Angeles in January 1994, when an early morning earthquake rocked the city. The quake measured 6.7 on the Richter scale and was centered in Northridge, in the San Fernando Valley. The Northridge earthquake caused 61 deaths—a miraculously low number thanks to the timing of the quake—6,500 serious injuries, and a staggering $20 billion in property damage. It left 20,000 people homeless and temporarily shut down the freeway system due to major bridge collapses.
After the 1992 riot and 1994 Northridge earthquake, Los Angeles began a rapid recovery. The economy bounced back, relieving social tensions, if not solving the social problems that underlay the riot. Rapid reconstruction of the freeway system restored optimism among the city's millions of commuters.
Over the course of the late 1990s, social tensions decreased and a new boom in major civic construction began. Los Angeles massively revised its city charter in 1999 to provide greater accountability and give neighborhoods a greater voice.
In 2005 Los Angeles elected its first Hispanic mayor in more than 100 years. City councilman Antonio Villaraigosa, a Mexican American, fashioned a broad coalition that included Asians, blacks, Latinos, and whites. He won about 59 percent of the vote in what some political observers called the city’s first successful coalition between black and Latino voters.
Villaraigosa is a Democrat with a liberal background as a former teachers’ union organizer and a past president of the American Civil Liberties Union in Southern California. He was expected to focus on improving the city’s schools and mass transit system.
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