Imagining California 25 years From Now: What Will Golden State Look Like in 2050?

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One hundred and seventy-five years ago, our state was the prize in an unjust war whose aim was to extend slavery beyond the plantations of the South to the valleys of California. Fifty years later, those valleys were dominated by corporate agriculture (wheat, cattle, cotton and oranges) and controlled politically by railroad interests.

D.J. Waldie

Special for CalMatters

Opinion

By 1950, the future of California was in the hands of real estate developers. The valleys filled with houses and then with all of us — believers in the golden dream and disillusioned hustlers alike.

At the start of a new millennium in 2000, the dreamers still arrived. Not from “back east” but from the Global South and the As