Reflecting on Origins

My parents moved to the foothills in the 1980s. When I look at old photos of La Crescenta from that era it’s striking how familiar everything still feels. Montrose had already been built out. Nearly all the housing we see today was already in place. But if you rewind another 50 years – back before the Great Depression – the landscape was unrecognizable. The streams still ran wild untouched by the concrete channels carved after the infamous New Year’s Day floods. Montrose didn’t yet exist and single-family homes had not yet filled the valley.

Today we live in a time that feels like dizzying change. Just turn on the news: wars, tariffs, artificial intelligence and new technologies reshape daily life. Yet here in La Crescenta, beyond people of all ages gazing down with glass bricks in their hands, life proceeds much as it did when I was growing up. The familiar rhythms of school, work and suburban routines endure. But not for long.

La Crescenta – like much of the country and much of the world – is on the brink of a transformation more akin to the early 20th century when a single lifetime could encompass the advent of the car, the airplane and even the moon landing. Today you can ride in a Waymo – Google’s awkward name for a driverless taxi – from downtown LA to Santa Monica. Just a few weeks ago, a fellow dad and kind engineer pointed out a SpaceX Starship launch from Vandenberg as our kids played at the park – an incredible sight I would have missed otherwise.

The Doomsday Clock, the symbolic gauge created by Manhattan Project scientists to measure how close humanity is to self-destruction, now sits at just 89 seconds to midnight – the closest it has ever been. And yet, if we manage not to blow ourselves up, today’s children might not just send rovers to Mars – they might set foot there themselves.

Self-driving cars are no longer just hype – they are here and they will reshape everyday life. We won’t call them “autonomous vehicles” for long, just as we no longer speak of “horseless carriages.” And this new freedom – to hop into a pod and travel without a driver – will ripple across society. Those too young, too old or otherwise unable to drive may soon be unshackled from those limits.

Boulevards like Foothill may be repurposed as automation allows us to reimagine how we use our space. When I pick up my daughter from daycare, I often find myself in bumper-to-bumper traffic – a side effect of GPS apps rerouting vehicles onto neighborhood streets. (Those same apps, by the way, seem to corrode our innate sense of direction. But I digress.) 

Self-driving vehicles will be able to travel closely together and move safely at speeds unsafe for human drivers. Our streets won’t stay the same.

The signs of change are already visible. Teens zip around on e-bikes, a marvel of youthful independence. As a cyclist who’s taken more than one tumble, I wince at the helmetless heads. From 1983 to 2022, the percentage of 16 year olds with driver’s licenses dropped from around 50% to 25%, according to the U.S. Dept. of Transportation. Where once driving was a rite of passage to freedom, smartphones and alternative transit are shifting that story.

Many other transitions are underway across our nation – and on this pale blue dot we call home.

I reached out to publisher Robin Goldsworthy about writing regularly for CV Weekly because I love this place. I grew up here. I’m raising my daughter here. I’ve been lucky to meander through a career at the intersection of civic action and technological innovation, a journey that’s taken me from New York to London to Singapore – and now back to this little valley I still call home. Despite all of the turbulence of our times, I find myself deeply grateful: for meaningful work, for good friends and, above all, for a fantastic family.

Thanks for reading. I look forward to writing more in the weeks and months to come.

Patrick is a husband, father, son, brother, lifelong reader, lover of intellectual and athletic adventures, and the author of “A New California Dream.” He is a proud graduate of La Crescenta’s world class public schools and writes here in his personal capacity.