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The thinkers and doers in this experimental human laboratory are immensely busy. Having created so much smog, they are bound to be the first in the alleviation of it, perhaps by perfecting the carbonfree auto engine, perhaps through more stringent traffic legislation. Little by little, they will assume firmer control over environmental deterioration by creating bigger units of government that can act on a regional rather than a local basis.
Having invented urban sprawl, Californians may be among the first to find ways of revitalizing and rebuilding the inner cities. Los Angeles, with its stubborn refusal to invest in efficient rapid transit, may yet be obliged to give up the automobile and go to subways; for a model, there will be San Francisco's computer-controlled BART (Bay Area Transit) system, which is, after many years, now within reach of completion.
What Will Happen?
Prisons will be renamed, like the one at Chino, "Institutions for Men," and will permit weekend connubial visits for the married inmates. Universities will adopt cable-television systems that will permit students to "attend" their classes at home—and, incidentally, to keep their cars from jamming the highways. There will be no letup from nude-look fashion designers, who foresee the day when it will be commonplace for women to wear only body cosmetics from the waist up. The men will continue to wear clothes—but ever flashier ones. The antiestablishmentarians who created the underground press have already been trying some new wrinkles. Underground FM radio now broadcasts acid-rock, counsels draft resistance and dropping out.
There was even a short-lived UHF underground TV station in Ventura, near Los Angeles. It failed for lack of money but UHF holds the promise—or threat —of providing inexpensive telecasting for a vast youth market.
The economic giant will continue its incredible growth. By 1975, says the Bank of California's economic consultant, Alden Fensel, California's gross state product will reach $150 billion, and business spending $18 billion (from the present $13.3 billion). By the same year, California's population will have risen to 23.5 million, and its personal income will have climbed from $81.7 billion to $100 billion.
There is always hope that the solutions to California's human problems can also be found. Meanwhile, in the search for new answers and guidelines, California is still faltering—and is paying in human terms. Lord James Bryce, the great English jurist and student of American life, suggested as much in 1909, when he addressed an assembly at Berkeley. Bryce asked: "What will happen when California is filled by fifty millions of people, and its valuation is five times what it is now, and the wealth will be so great that you will find it difficult to know what to do with it? The day will, after all, have only twenty-four hours. Each man will have only one mouth, one pair of ears, and one pair of eyes. There will be more people—as many perhaps as the country can support—and the real question will be not about making more wealth or having more people, but whether the people will then be happier or better." Sixty years later, it is still the real question—for Californians and, inevitably, the rest of the nation.