1988 Predictions on Life in 2013 Los Angeles

No robots in our homes, but many predictions about 2013 come true Jerry Lockenour couldn't predict what lay ahead for him 25 years ago when he stashed the Los Angeles Times' Magazine on a cabinet shelf. The April 3, 1988, magazine's cover illustration showed bubble-shaped cars traveling in "electro lanes" on a double-decked, high-rise-lined 1st Street in downtown's Civic Center area. The cover's headline was "L.A. 2013: Techno-Comforts and Urban Stresses — Fast Forward to One Day in the Life of a Future Family." Inside was a lengthy essay that described a day in the life of a fictional Granada Hills family in April 2013. Shorter secondary stories explored experts' opinions about future transportation issues, pollution, crime, overpopulation, computerized education and use of personal...

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California Rental Housing Shortage

Richard Green, director of the USC Lusk Center for Real Estate, has launched his blog “Real Estate Matters” at Forbes. Check out his first entry on California’s shortage of rental housing. California has a shortage of rental housing. Even in the aftermath of the greatest real estate bust since the Great Depression, houses in California are expensive.  The reason is simple: the rent, a key fundamental underlying house prices, is expensive here. To put this in some perceptive, I used the 2011 American Community Survey to tabulate rents at the 25th percentile for California’s metropolitan areas, and divided this by renter incomes...

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Carbon Beach: California's Billionaire Beach

California's Billionaire Beach: Where Larry Ellison Leads A Pack Of 10-Figure-Plus Fortunes  Westside Estate Agency's Stephen Shapiro tells Forbes that Carbon Beach property, which sells for about $200,000/sq. ft., has become the sandbox to billionaires. Check out the heavy bidders with homes there in this month’s "Billionaires" issue. California‘s Carbon Beach is the world’s most expensive sandbox. Subdivided by Malibu’s founding family, the Rindges, in the 1930s, Carbon now commands upward of $200,000 per foot of beachfront. The draw for Hollywood’s power players? It’s the city’s deepest, driest strip of sand and less than 20 miles from Tinseltown.  View full article he...

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