The Politics of Contracting: Los Angeles County and the Lakewood Plan, 1954-1962

Abstract

Few counties in the United States have played a more vital role in twentieth-century metropolitan affairs than Los Angeles County. The years from 1910 to World War II saw the county government enter into certain types of service contracts with cities, organize various special-purpose districts, and provide a wide range of services to unincorporated areas.' Rapid population growth in the postwar decade caused many outlying communities to seek incorporation as a means for control of land use policies. Fearful that new incorporations would reduce the size and quality of its service establishment, the county offered a plan by which cities could contract with it for a full set of municipal services. Suburban Lakewood embraced the scheme and provided a model for newly organized cities seeking to circumvent the bureaucracy and costs of local government. The Lakewood plan established a pattern of public decision-making that departed in important ways from urban governmental structure not only in California but also in American metropolitan areas generally. In so doing, it raised serious questions of local control, accountability, responsiveness, and metropolitan obligations. Resolving these issues demanded concessions on the part of both the county and Lakewood plan communities. Thousands of people migrated to southern California during the post World War II decade, for defense-related jobs in aircraft, aerospace, electronics, and scientific instrument industries. Los Angeles County's population rose from 4,151,000 in 1950 to 6,000,000 by 1960.2 Federal Housing Authority mortgage insurance and liberal loans from the Veterans Administration that required only small down payments enabled middle-class and workingclass families to buy homes in suburban districts. Applying mass production techniques to the housing industry, large-scale developers subdivided farmland throughout the county and built standardized units on tracts of fifty, a hundred, and several hundred acres.3 Lakewood was the most spectacular project. Developer Louis H. Boyar purchased 3,3 75 acres of farmland adjacent to Long Beach in 1950. His company, with the help of professional city planners, laid out a community of 17,500 homes for an ultimate population of more than 70,000. By 1953 Lakewood Park, advertised as 'The City as New as Tomorrow, had streets, side-

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