Past as prologue: more than once, the region has had to decide how to position itself for the future.

PROBLEMS with capacity at the ports. Worries about the transportation system. City Hall in need era clean sweep.

Los Angeles in 2004? Try more like 1900.

It's sometimes easy to forget that past generations faced their own big problems, many similar to those of today. It's also true that choices made decades ago, both locally and statewide, have had far-reaching implications for 21st Century Angelenos.

"They fixed a lot of things and set up a lot of structures--and that would establish patterns," said USC American History Professor Philip Ethington.

There were essentially three great historical periods in which major decisions were made and momentous changes occurred: the Progressive era at the turn of the century, the post-World War II era of unbridled growth of the 1950s and 1960s, and the era of limits, starting with the passage of Proposition 13 in 1978.

Hiram Johnson is rightly regarded as one of California's pre-eminent governors. His election in 1910 paved the way for reforms that have come to define state government: the recall, regulatory controls on big business and even the workers' compensation system.

Less well known is that Progressive fires were burning even earlier in Los Angeles, where voters passed charter amendments that allowed recalls, referendums and initiatives in 1903 in an effort to free the grip of local government from the Southern Pacific and other railroad interests.

Ethington represents a growing chorus of academics and others who believe some of these Progessive-era reforms were unwise, failing to anticipate the explosion of political advertising all too common today that allowed moneyed interests to control the initiative process, instead of voters.

However, the Progressive ideals also included the notion that government should play a major role in economic and social development. Thus, that era also saw the establishment of the great semi-autonomous units of Los Angeles government that literally built the infrastructure that allowed the city to grow from a backwater of 102,000 in 1900 to a major city of 1.2 million in 1930.

Under the leadership of William Mulholland and Ezrah Scattergood, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power built the Los Angeles Aqueduct, bringing Owens Valley water to Los Angeles in 1913, along with its hydroelectric power.

Nearly as important were the city government units that created a deepwater harbor out of the initially shallow port at San Pedro, and later an international airport near the ocean.

"A series of extraordinary public decisions and investments built modern Los Angeles and Southern California," writes UC San Diego historian Steven Erie, who argues that these government units literally "invented" modern Los Angeles.

The presumption of that time was that growth was good and would lead to an overall increase in wealth--a presumption that carried into the post World War II era when California and Los Angeles opened its arms to hordes of returning GIs and others from across the nation.

As Southern California farmland was paved over with tract homes, the region and state were soon faced with the issue of how to accommodate a bigger boom than even Mulholland could have imagined.

Local authorities responded with the first freeway system in the state--the Arroyo Seco Parkway that connected Los Angeles to Pasadena, constructed around 1940.

Boosters around the state knew that much more was needed, laying the groundwork for the ambitious accomplishments of Gov. Pat Brown's administration from 1959 to 1966. "There was an incredible hubris in that generation," said Ethington. "'They had very little sense of limits."

The higher education system was organized into a structure still in use today (with community colleges feeding the state universities and the University of California). In addition, the Legislature established a 12,414-mile freeway system, with federal help.

Along the way, the region's once efficient and popular Red Cars operated by Pacific Electric went into steep decline and were handed over to the new county transit authority in 1958. With a lack of public support for an elevated rail line or subway, the authority closed the trolley down for good in 1961.

Era of limits

But in the 1960s and 1970s, traffic congestion, crowded schools and smog had all taken their toll and the consensus for growth began breaking down. Aggressive public institutions, led by public taxes, were no longer seen as a solution to the region's problems, but in some cases the cause.

"Growth had helped make your land and your business more profitable, but then this (postwar) generation matures and they begin to recognize that further growth doesn't really help them anymore," said Fernando Guerra, director of the Center for the Study of Los Angeles at Loyola Marymount University.

Thus was born the era of limits that reached its apogee with the 1978 passage of Proposition 13. The initiative, which cut and then limited properly taxes, was pushed to victory by an irascible Los Angeles business man named Howard Jarvis.

Almost two decades later, his same anti-growth sentiment was behind the 1994 passage of Proposition 187, which sought to pull the welcome mat out from under new immigrants by restricting public services available to them.

About the only types of government agencies that have gained power over this period are regulators such as the South Coast Air Quality Management District, which has sought to clean the air by measures that often ended up stunting growth.

As for Proposition 13, almost 30 years after its passage the initiative has kept property taxes contained for long-time homeowners. But its failings are well documented: inequities in how new homes are taxed, the financial starvation of local governments, and the often unwanted sprouting of big-box retail centers to help capture sales tax dollars.

But perhaps the biggest failure in this era of limits is that growth hasn't really been limited. Past policies created such a large population base in Southern California that the birth rate--fueled by continuing immigration--threatens a tidal wave of new, young Angelenos.

The current generation of government officials and business leaders are now looking for a new "post-modern" way of growth that is channeled but not stopped. For example, infill residential and commercial development is seen as a way to promote targeted growth without taking on massive urban renewal efforts. "We are in a paradigm shift (again) but we have not completely shifted over," said Guerra.