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Ed Soja died in the evening of Sunday November 1st, 2015, after an extended illness. His departure represents a huge loss to his many friends and colleagues both here in Los Angeles and all over the world.

This article represents a broad and occasionally polemical meditation on the nature and significance of creative cities. I seek to situate the concept of creative cities within the context of the so-called new economy and to trace out the connections of these phenomena to recent shifts in technologies, structures of production, labor markets, and the dynamics of locational agglomeration. I try to show, in particular, how the structures of the new economy unleash historically specific forms of economic and cultural innovation in modern cities. The argument is concerned passim with policy issues and, above all, with the general possibilities and limitations faced by policymakers in any attempt to build creative cities. The effects of globalization are discussed, with special reference to the prospective emergence of a worldwide network of creative cities bound together in relations of competition and cooperation. In the conclusion, I pinpoint some of the darker dimensions-both actual and potential-of creative cities.

The paper opens with a brief description of the multimedia and digital visual effects industry in Southern California. The specifications of a questionnaire survey of two select groups of workers in the industry are delineated. The survey results show that workers in the industry are predominantly young, white, highly-educated and well-remunerated. Patterns of space-time filtering of individuals into the local labor market are investigated. These individuals originate for the most part outside of Southern California, but once employed in the industry and the region they tend to become locked in to the local jobs system. The sectoral and occupational distribution of workers is described, with particular reference to a core group of multimedia and visual digital effects employees. Workers are shown, too, to be highly organized in overlapping professional networks which function as important sources of information, know-how, and employment contacts. The paper ends with a brief allusion to the need for more research on processes of worker acculturation.

The California economy is in the doldrums, especially in the Los Angeles region, owing in large part to the decline of aerospace-defense industries. The region also suffers from the nation's worst pollution problem, owing largely to its dependence on automobiles. So, we're led to ask whether these linked perils might be converted into a combined opportunity. We ask whether we might blunt both the environmental and the employment problems by building a new electric-vehicle industry in Southern California that exploits its skilled but underemployed labor and managerial resources and creates a transportation system that doesn't pollute.

Despite huge reductions of noxious emissions from factories and cars, Southern California's air is still terrible. It's so bad that the state is requiring that two percent of new cars sold in 1998 be zero polluters and ten percent by 2003. Many researchers here have become preoccupied with teh foul air, and so are searching for ways of making cars less obnoxious and hence better servants.

Individually and collectively, the five chapters that make up this report present a grim portrait of life in South-Central Los Angeles and other places like it, and they constitute a remarkable indictment of mainstream society for its indifference and neglect. The chapters lay out a detailed bill of specifics as to the nature and causes of the crisis in South-Central Los Angeles, together with various policy recommendations for dealing with some of the most troubling aspects. In Chapter 1, Ong describes the depth and range of economic deprivation in both South-Central Los Angeles and other parts of the wider metropolitan area. Leavitt and Heskin then take up the issue of the housing situation in South-Central. Brown, et al. describe a number of alarming failures of public health and health care delivery in Los Angeles. Darby, et al. point to the striking breakdown of education in Los Angeles in general and South-Central in particular. In Chapter 5, Estrada and Sensiper bring the proceedings to a conclusion with a discussion of the many different social cross-currents and the concomitant difficulties of political mobilization that mark South-Centra

The report opens with a brief discussion of the role of regional industrial policy in shaping local developmental trajectories.An outline of the main varieties of electric vehicle technology is presented. Special attention is paid to the operational characteristics of electric vehicles, the various kinds of components and sub-assemblies that go into the vehicles, and the urban infrastructure requirements needed to support extensive electric vehicle usage. A short summary of electric vehicle developments around the world is appended, with particular emphasis on US, Japanese, and European efforts.