Decius wrote:
Our cities may have grown up around shipping and transportation, but this isn't the 1700s anymore. Modern cities are successful due to an interplay between culture, capital, and educational institutions, not transportation routes.
I don't disagree with your larger point about New Orleans, but you go further than is necessary to make your case. If you think shipping isn't critically important to the economic health of Los Angeles, you need to spend more time in Los Angeles. The transportation business brings more money into the city than the entertainment business does. Take a look at this briefing: Los Angeles is by far the most important city in the US for combined import and export activity. It alone is responsible for over 20 percent of all US container traffic and has seen that share expand steadily in recent years. The local economic impact of port activity in Los Angeles is also considerable. The Port of Los Angeles employs 259,000 people in Southern California and generates nearly $27 billion in industry sales annually. Long Beach is second on the list, which means that the combined LA/Long Beach area is responsible for an astonishing one-third of all container traffic in the nation.
There's a lot more to the report; it's worth a look. Keep in mind that the 259k jobs and the $27B is just for the Port of LA. The Long Beach port has numbers that approach those for LA. See also: liner shipping facts and figures. As one point of comparison, BLS reports that "In 2002, there were about 360,000 wage and salary jobs in the motion picture and video industries. Most of the workers were in motion picture and video production." At the most, half of those jobs are in the Los Angeles area. As another data point, one source says that "In 2001, worldwide gross revenues generated by motion pictures in all territories and media (including music and ancillaries) amounted to over $40 billion." I don't know how reliable that number is, but it's a rough indicator. On the Continuing Importance of the Shipping and Transportation Industries | 
