Reviewer Jon Christensen suggests that an alternative title to this book on urban economic development by four UCLA researchers could be the much simpler, and probably more attention-grabbing, "How San Francisco Beat L.A. — for Now Anyway." (via Planetizen)

This is a very serious new book about economics and policy written by a team of academics under the leadership of Michael Storper, a professor of urban planning, economic geography and economic sociology with joint appointments at UCLA, the London School of Economics and Political Science, and Sciences Po in Paris. But it is written in a very accessible style, using the structure of a scientific detective story. And it is a must-read for anyone who cares about the future of California and cities more broadly.

The mystery is why the Bay Area and Greater Los Angeles metropolitan regions, which were essentially similar by many important measures in 1970 — especially real household incomes, but also innovation, investment, education and creative jobs — have diverged so dramatically in the years since. The Bay Area has continued to rise in the top ranks of metropolitan areas and now enjoys real average household incomes (minus housing costs) 50 percent higher than Los Angeles, along with higher educational attainment and more creative jobs, patents and venture capital investment. Los Angeles has fallen badly behind in all of the same measures and is now at risk of dropping into the rank of middling urban regions.

Although L.A. is now trying to play catch-up with a “Silicon Beach” cluster of tech and media businesses around Venice and Santa Monica, the Bay Area definitely won the “new economy.” And L.A. lost it.

The question is: Why? And how? Or to continue the detective metaphor: Whodunit?1

• 1. http://m.sfgate.com/books/article/The-Rise-and-Fall-of-Urban-Economies-6511749.php#photo-8647899