Los Angeles is the quintessential 21st Century metropolis, and an incredible laboratory for students interested in design and development of the built environment. Southern California continues to prosper and grow, but the built environment in our mega-region of 20 million people is falling apart. The exuberant construction spree of the 1950s and 1960s with federally financed freeways and FHA financed suburban homes first created an unimagined quality of life, like middle-class families with their own backyards and swimming pools, suburban shopping malls and schools, free-flowing roadways connecting homes to work, and weekend family driving trips as recreation The same systems in planning, in law, in finance, and in politics that shaped Southern California are wreaking havoc to our region and other regions of the world, and are preventing government, business and community leaders from finding alternative solutions and from establishing new, viable systems for the 21st century. Today, middle-class families are struggling to find affordable housing, freeways can no longer serve workers and employers adequately, financially strapped schools fail to educate 50% of our children, there is no comprehensive transit service to speak of, and no one would choose to get into one's car for a recreational drive. Southern California, being the vanguard of national trends, is exhibiting critical signs of system distress. What happens here will happen and is happening in other regions, what solutions we bring to bear here will inform the country and other world cities as to how to plan for and re-invent the new built environment.