The Real World
LAX Master Plan
- LAX is now the fourth largest airport in the world in the number of passengers handled. Plans are afoot to expand it to better handle ever-growing hordes of travellers. This site explores the various propsals, and their status.
- MTA Construction
- Do you dream of a day when you can take the Metro from Long Beach to Pasadena? Find out what the future of public transportation may hold for LA.
- Valley Secession
- Will they or won't they? If the San Fernando Valley pulls it off, it will radically change the face of the city of LA.
The Imagined World
Los Angeles has always haunted the imagination. Here are visions of the future (and in many cases that vision is now our yesterday
or today!) from books and movies. So far, we have happily avoided most of the disasters they foretold.
- Blade Runner (Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep)
- A classic sci-fi novel by Phillip K. Dick and a classic sci-fi movie by Ridley Scott, this is basically a hard-boiled detective story. But the picture of LA in 2019 painted by Scott in his 1982 film is a haunting one.
- City of Quartz: Excavating the Future in Los Angeles
- This book by Mike Davis looks at LA's past and present and sees its historical and ongoing problems with economic disparity, racial enmity,
and environmental hazards plaguing its future.
- Escape from LA
- In this 1996 film, LA in 2000 is separated from the mainland by a massive earthquake and is subsequently turned into a maximum security prison. Best part: surfing down Wilshire Blvd.
- Independence Day
- This 1996 film isn't really set in LA, but you do get the cheap thrill of an alien invasion and of watching various LA landmarks getting blown up by said evil aliens.
- Strange Days
- A hopped-up whodunit adventure film set in late 1999 LA, this 1995 film paints a heck of a picture of what the end of the millenium may be
like. Sadly, we now know the movie was full of it. Too bad, as the whole VR idea they used was really neat.
- The Thirteenth Floor
- This 1999 film is a sci-fi thriller that explores the ominous possibility of computer-simulated universes, where people only believe
they are real. The best parts of the movie are the breathtakingly realistic CGI shots of 1937 LA.
- Volcano
- This improbable 1997 movie preys on LA's reputation as disaster central. This time out in the not-too-distant future, the La Brea Tar Pits erupt and a lava flow endangers the Miracle
Mile. Will La-la land survive?