Imagine a video game in which you got to build America from scratch. Like Sim City on a national scale. You got to pick where all the cities went, where the farms were and what they grew, the national parks, roads, everything. And imagine you had to pick one location to become a megacity of 10 million people, the nation’s world class metropolis. You would pick the place where the most people would want to live and have the best chance to thrive - the place with the best combination of natural setting, weather, and opportunities for trade with other countries.

You would pick Los Angeles.

It’s the best location in the country, hands down. Let’s play the video game and run through your thought process. You would pick LA even if you were sitting in your mom’s basement looking only at a physical map and a climate map:

• Your megacity should be on a coast so it can have a port.

• On the coasts, you need a good, temperate climate so people will want to settle in your megacity. The West Coast has better weather than the East Coast (terrible winters) or Gulf Coast (terrible summers).

• On the West Coast, you need enough room for all the people in your megacity. The Los Angeles Basin is the largest coastal plain on the West Coast - it’s the only land wide and flat enough to support 10 million people.

Ok, so you picked LA by process of elimination without knowing anything about it. Did you pick a nice place? Oh hell yes you did:

• LA’s famous mediterranean climate, found on only 2% of the world’s land, boasts mild winters and summers that have kept Americans California Dreamin’ for almost as long as America has existed.

• LA’s amazingly diverse natural setting allows you to snowboard and surf on the same day. The highest point in the city, Mount Lukens, is more than 5,000 feet above the beach, making LA the city with the greatest elevation change in the Continental US. The beaches are world famous. The mountains in the city feature numerous waterfalls, spectacular canyons, and breathtaking views. Meanwhile, most of LA is relatively flat and amenable to a straightforward, efficient street grid.

• LA’s location makes it a gateway to both Asia and Latin America. From here, you can do business with both Shanghai and Mexico City.

Now let’s set the video game scenario aside and talk about the strengths of the real Los Angeles as it exists today, starting with its layout. Unlike other Sunbelt cities, much of LA was originally designed not for cars but for what was once the largest streetcar network in the world. This means the city already has many dense, walkable neighborhoods that provide a good starting point for growth.

Also, LA’s temperate climate allows homes to use relatively little heat and air conditioning, which means each Angeleno has one of the lowest carbon footprints of any city dweller in the country, even though we drive more than in some other cities.

But even given this long list of physical advantages, LA’s greatest asset is really its people:

• Incredible cultural diversity. LA is home to Little Ethiopia, Little Bangladesh, Little Armenia, Little Tokyo and Little Osaka…It is the city with the most Salvadorans outside of El Salvador, the most Koreans outside Korea, the most Iranians outside Iran, the most Filipinos outside the Philippines…

• Culture of openness and tolerance. LA has always been a place people move to in order to start anew, from a sunshine-seeking Midwesterner in the 1920s, to a Mexican immigrant in the 1980s, to an aspiring actor last Tuesday. A city of people reinventing themselves is a city open to new ideas, tolerant of differences, and buzzing with the potential for greatness.

• Creativity and innovation. At no point in world history has a greater collection of creatively talented people ever assembled in one place than right now in LA. From movies to music to art to architecture to tech - this is the place to be if you dream of making a living off your dreams.

Let’s up the stakes: Los Angeles has the best bones of any city in the world. I challenge you to name a city on Earth with a better combination of natural setting, climate, geographical location, and culture. Rio is less culturally diverse. Sydney is more isolated. Singapore has worse weather. Marseille doesn’t have the natural setting.

Where is everybody?

There is no reason why LA shouldn’t be a much bigger city. More people deserve to live in such a wonderful place. In fact, more people want to live here. They just can’t - there’s nowhere to put them.

In the second half of the 20th century, through a series of zoning changes, Angelenos made it impossible for the city to grow. LA’s zoning laws used to plan for growth - the laws allowed enough homes to eventually be built to accommodate around 10 million people. But starting in the 1960s, downzoning after downzoning reduced that capacity to barely above the actual population. And the city wasn’t subtle about it. In 1972, the the Planning Dept. issued a 75-page report calling for a population ceiling of 4.1 million. Once the ceiling was implemented (see plummeting black line below), it became illegal to build enough housing to let the city grow.

The population ceiling worked. LA basically stopped growing around 2000. In the 21st century, the city has added a paltry 175,000 people, an 0.2% annual growth rate. For comparison, in the same time period, Phoenix and Houston grew 2.0% annually, Vegas and Orlando 2.4%, and Austin 3.0%.

Let’s say LA lifted the ceiling and began growing like Phoenix and Houston. Starting with a 2025 population of 3.8 million and adding 2% compounded every year gets us to…10 million Angelenos by 2075. We can get there if LA grows for next 50 years at the same pace that the next two biggest Sunbelt cities have grown for the past 25 years.

Getting to 10 million

To achieve 2% annual growth for 50 years, LA will have to change how it has thought about change for the previous 50 years. Put simply, we have prioritized preserving what is here now (but not who is here now) and have feared the changes that new development brings. Almost every time a chance to grow presents itself, we get anxious about the potential harms of change - the neighborhood will look different! the low-income neighbors will move away! there won’t be any parking! - and claw it back.

The problem is that the harm is happening regardless. LA has the most unhoused people in the country. Those who stay housed are moving away in droves to find cheaper housing.

It doesn’t have to be this way. If we Angelenos can ditch our scarcity mentality and embrace our megacity destiny, we can start growing again.

First, we can start by planning for more growth. Add much more zoning capacity around the biggest job centers and best transit. Stop excluding entire neighborhoods from the process just because they only contain houses today.

Then we can prioritize growth. Make it more attractive for builders to develop housing in the city. Overhaul our broken approval and permitting processes so apartments take less than an average of 1,748 days to build. Cut “impact” fees. Treat newly built townhomes and apartments as valuable in themselves, not something to extract value from (looking at you, ULA tax). Roll out the red carpet for anyone who builds affordable housing. Build social housing.

We also have to make sure that when we add millions more Angelenos, we don’t add millions more cars. That means building more trains, bus lanes, bike paths, and sidewalks so people can get around the city in safer, healthier, and less stressful ways.

While we’re dreaming, let’s also repeal Proposition 13 so our city isn’t perpetually broke and can fund the services we need. Building a bunch of new buildings and adding a bunch of new residents will help increase the city’s revenues as it grows, but getting rid of Prop 13 would do the job much faster.

What does 10 million look like?

Are we talking about the “Manhattanization” of Los Angeles here? Not at all. 10 million people living in LA’s 469 square miles equals a density of about 21,000 people per square mile. Just how dense is that?

• Less dense than New York City (28,000 people per square mile across all five boroughs). About the same density as Queens (22,000).

• A bit more dense than San Francisco (19,000).

• About the same density as Palms (21,000), Playa Vista (21,000), and Hollywood (23,000). Of those three neighborhoods, only Hollywood has any buildings over 7 stories tall.

We don’t need to build a bunch of skyscrapers all over the city to get to 10 million. San Francisco has neighborhoods with skyscrapers and neighborhoods that look like this:

There is so much valuable, underused land in LA that could be put to much better use. Take the intersection of Beverly and La Brea Boulevards, a location in an excellent neighborhood, close to several job centers, walkable to all kinds of shops and restaurants, and served by two high-frequency bus lines. It’s no exaggeration to say that this is one of the best places in the world to live. If you asked a mother in a less prosperous part of the world to point to a place she would dream of raising her kids, this would be one of the best spots for her to put her finger down.

At this world-class location, you will find two Chevron gas stations, a car rental agency, and a small strip mall.

Just a total waste of this valuable place. More people should live at Beverly and La Brea, and at countless other underdeveloped places in the city. We can get to 10 million without radically altering LA’s feel, unless you count gas stations as historically significant and worthy of preservation (as some do!).

Why?

You may be wondering what the point of this exercise is. Just because some random blogger thinks LA has room to grow, why should it? Because I think it’s a tragedy that more people don’t get to live in this magnificent city. That LA is hemorrhaging families instead of welcoming them. I have personally lost friend after friend to other cities - Phoenix, Albuquerque, Portland, Redlands, the list goes on and on. None of them wanted to leave. But housing costs forced them out.

When my friends left town, they moved to places less prosperous than LA. They were downwardly mobile. It’s bad for the country when people are forced to move to less economically productive places. It’s bad for LA to lose young families who would have contributed so much to this city. And of course, it’s terrible for my friends not to be able to live where they want.

We are so lucky to live in a place where so many people want to be. That’s the best kind of city - where people are happy to be there! I want LA to be generous and capacious enough to welcome all who want to live here.

An LA of 10 million people will be a stronger city. More economically dynamic. More politically powerful. Able to take bigger swings. At this moment, LA is practically paralyzed by a generational budget crisis, an anemic response to the Palisades Fire, and sluggish preparations for the Olympics. Wouldn’t it be nice to live in a city with more capacity to tackle big problems? Let’s ditch our scarcity mentality and start growing.