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Civitas Outlook
Topic
Politics
Published on
Nov 15, 2025
Contributors
Joel Kotkin

Mayors to Cities: Drop Dead

Contributors
Joel Kotkin
Joel Kotkin
Senior Research Fellow
Joel Kotkin
Summary

Far-left policies on policing, education, and taxation are pushing Los Angeles, Chicago, and others to the brink.

Summary

Far-left policies on policing, education, and taxation are pushing Los Angeles, Chicago, and others to the brink.

Listen to this article

Rick Cole has spent several decades running cities, both as an elected official and as a planner. He has worked in suburban Azusa, California, and progressive-dominated Santa Monica and currently sits on the Pasadena City Council. Yet as he looks out at the urban future, he feels despair—most particularly, about the city of Los Angeles, where he recently departed as deputy mayor and chief deputy controller.

“The progressives are not focused on governance,” he suggested over sushi in Little Tokyo, a stone’s throw from City Hall. “They prefer virtue-signaling to running a city.” Cole’s is not the complaint of a conservative but someone who identifies as “a pragmatic progressive,” even a “sewer socialist.” The problem, he says, is that today’s progressives lack a “results-oriented approach” that actually helps residents.

Read the full article at City Journal.

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