To see a future for California, look to the past.
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. 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.
Fifty years on, at the start of a new millennium in 2000, the dreamers still arrived. Their point of origin wasn’t “back East” but the Global South and the Asian “far West.” Developers still turned square miles of farmland into tract house suburbia. Big, old-style corporations came and went. New technologies boomed and sometimes busted, but overall, the momentum in the systems of industry, finance and labor that defined California in the mid-20th century had slowed.
In 2025, the fractures in California are increasingly visible. Californians today see a future where their state isn’t exactly California anymore, shorn of the myths of El Dorado and all the booms that followed and without the extravagant promise that there would always be enough of whatever Californians wanted: clean air, abundant water, unspoiled nature, social mobility, and endless growth.
What California will be in its bicentennial year of 2050 is subject to unpredictable conditions. The nation becomes ungovernable; the San Andreas rips; drought worsens in the Colorado River watershed; AI-driven technologies deliver worst-case scenarios: social isolation, broken economies, global unrest, accidental war.
Absent these shocks, continuities will dominate California’s tomorrows. Demographic trends underway since 1990 will persist. Californians will be older, with a median age of nearly 42, up from a median age of 38 today. Nearly one-quarter of us will be over 65, troubling the state’s image of youthful hedonism as well as the job market. The state’s ethnic and racial diversity will exceed even today’s — potentially a cause of more polarization. Ethnic and political sorting will continue to send more Californians to red states and bring immigrants —in fewer numbers — to change the makeup of the political and civic organizations through which power is channeled.
By 2050, nearly 50% of us will have Latino roots. The percentage of white non-Latinos will drift down to 25%. This realignment will likely bring a California-style Latino populism that disrupts conventional blue/red political binaries. Distrust of all political parties will erode party identification and scramble elections, but the dysfunctional habits of state politics will probably continue.
Nineteen-fifties California — young, better educated, risk-taking — excelled at turning Cold War defense spending into new industries and the shiny consumer products that defined a better tomorrow. When defense spending contracted in the 1990s, university researchers and hedge fund managers propelled newer and faster technological advances, leading to the disruptive potential of AI.
The qualities that made California uniquely a leader in innovation are less obvious now and the global competition is stiffer. Meeting the environmental and social challenges of 2050 could found new industries and generate jobs, but only if California marshals its human resources, restores aging infrastructure, and reinvests in the past’s successful educational, business and political collaborations.
Climate made California a seductive lifestyle product and still does. Forgotten are the cycles of drought that unmade the state’s cattle economy in the mid-19th century and drove titanic projects in the 20th century to bring water to places with little of their own. Climate change has already put these systems under stress. By 2050, we’ll use the water we have better through wastewater recycling, stormwater capture, limits on groundwater extraction, and agriculture fitted to a harsher climate regime.
But even with better water management and stricter water conservation, there will always be too little water in the southern half of the state. Fundamental ecological divides — north vs. south, coast vs. inland, temperate upland forest vs. dry chaparral lowland — will still fragment the California landscape and define Californians’ unique sense of place.
Disparities of income and household wealth among Californians are already some of the greatest in the nation. They’re expected to grow worse. The costs of a California lifestyle — particularly the cost of housing — will widen the gap between households at the top and the low- and middle-income families below. Without new and creative housing programs, less than one-third of Californians will be able to finance a median-priced home. There will be more houses in 2050 and in denser neighborhoods, but despite the state’s efforts there will never be enough affordable housing even as the state’s population declines as a consequence of fewer births and restricted immigration.
Sharp differences in the quality of life between one community and another — begun by redlining neighborhoods in the 1930s — will persist. The conditions that predispose some Californians to become homeless aren’t likely to improve very much, although there may be fewer unsheltered people asleep on city streets. Meanwhile, corporate refugees will follow the headquarters of Charles Schwab, Oracle, Northrop Grumman, and Chevron out of the state, along with new technology billionaires and their enclaves of unimaginable privilege.
California still wields an economy that has global reach, matched only by some nations. Its foundation is the abundance of the state’s resources, material as well as human — which have limits. Tomorrow’s California will deliver on its promises to Californians only if the state’s economic policies reflect the optimism of immigrant entrepreneurship, the justice of adequate wages, and the genuine need that households have for stable employment.
The challenge for Californians in 2050 will be one of imagination: to see themselves as inheritors of a compromised-but-still-resourceful California.
Despite political polarization and social divides amid increased ethnic and racial diversity, Californians display a broad consensus about what the “good life” in California could look like. Popular movements for equity and social justice are maturing. Political initiatives for healthcare, education, infrastructure renewal, homelessness and housing affordability could follow and deliver returns on job creation and neighborhood quality of life.
The dark magic of AI is a threat to middle-income and low-wage earners, but it could become a platform for finding better ways to manage what California is becoming by deepening our understanding of the environment, improving outcomes in education, and rationalizing the planning process at all levels of government. A state with too many unaccountable boards, commissions, and special districts and too many local governments jealous of their prerogatives could learn the hard lesson that a better future will come from regional coordination — in providing law enforcement, overseeing water management, delivering services to an aging population, responding to natural and human caused disasters, and planning for economic development.
An optimistic idea of California has always drawn Californians to what they hoped their state could be. That idea alone will not be enough. Momentum will not carry us into the mid-21st century. Californians need to accept the burdens of their history and shape their aspirations accordingly. They need to imagine a different kind of California, a California of shared potential, recognizing what had been lost or squandered in becoming Californian and understanding clearly what Californians can still achieve.
As hard as it will be to realize, the California we deserve is possible.
D. J. Waldie is a cultural historian, memoirist, and translator. His most recent book is Elements of Los Angeles: Earth, Water, Air Fire. This was written for Zócalo Public Square, an ASU Media Enterprise publication.
