The Spirit of Los Angeles Runs on the Highway

CALIFORNIA'S LARGEST CITY IS AN IMMENSE METROPOLITAN COMPLEX CREATED BY THE UNION OF SEVERAL SMALLER CITIES. IT'S HARD TO FIND YOUR WAY IN THE CITY OF ANGELS, BUT ONCE YOU SETTLE IN, A THOUSAND OPPORTUNITIES OPEN UP, SAYS BOCCONI ALUMNUS EDOARDO DEL VECCHIO

Los Angeles is a complex, polycentric city, a hub of smaller cities linked by highways. It's also a city of extremes, going from the derelict poverty of Downtown to the wealth and glamor of suburbs like Bel-Air, from the weirdos of Venice beach to the chic glitz of Beverly Hills, from the splendor of Hollywood studios to the urban decay affecting blacks living in Compton. Los Angeles is a multiethnic city, going from Arcadia which is 60% Asian to traditionally chicano East L.A. (96.7% Hispanic); it is a multitude of different realities coexisting at short distance from each other, like a series of sealed compartments, with the exception of Downtown, where the forces of economic development collide with the accumulation of decades of social squalor, so that the skyscrapers of the Financial District sit next to the 20,000 homeless of Skid Row.
 
Although I felt like I was a person that could easily adapt to change, my first year in Los Angeles was a cultural shock. From a geographical and cultural point of view, Los Angeles is Western civilization taken to the extreme; it's the triumph of the individualism and liberalism of America's pop and entertainment culture, which, produced in Hollywood, is then spread and consumed worldwide.
 
First of all I found myself guilty of ethnocentrism, i.e. I implicitly assumed Italian culture to be the system of reference by which to judge the habits and customs of other peoples. Our Italian culture, imbued with Catholic charity and a high school system based on the almost erudite study of humanities, is highly solidaristic and oriented to the past, in some ways conservative, skeptical and pessimistic about the future. We feel a bit smarter, a little more refined, all in all - let's be honest - a bit better than our uncouth American cousins, ready to  impart lessons of civilization and style. In contrast, Los Angeles, byproduct of the Calvinist work ethic and the entrepreneurial spirit of the pioneers of the Wild West, is more indulgent towards individual freedoms, and much more oriented to business, the future and the prospect of immediate gain (I recommend visiting the Hofestede Institute, if you are interested in the subject).
 
This mindset has ensured the development of a very dynamic business environment, where endless job opportunities are a good match for the frenzy with which California students strive to excel. In this regard, the campus of the University of Southern California (partner university with Bocconi) is fabulous. Enclosed by red brick walls, with a very nice old-world architecture, the campus sucks students into a self-sufficient microcosm, to the point of possibly cutting them off from external reality. With classes, cafeterias, dorms and social life all concentrated on campus or in its vicinity, students don't really need to go elsewhere.
 
Add to all this the always beautiful weather. The sun shines most of the year (so much that California has been suffering from five years of serious drought) and I think this has a very positive influence on the entrepreneurial attitudes of the people that live here.
 
 

by Edoardo Del Vecchio
Translated by Alex Foti