William Clark comments on “Is California Too Big?”

Sure—and why stop at two? Not that it’ll solve anything.
About 60 percent of the countries that make up the United Nations are smaller than Los Angeles County, yet many of these nations would prefer to split themselves into even smaller entities. There is a sense that smaller is better, and this notion is heightened by deep-seated tribal allegiances that are still paramount in much of the world.

In the U.S., political differences, not tribal allegiances, are creating the pressure for separation. Conservatives don’t want to pay more taxes, and liberals would like more government regulation. So maybe it would be better if conservatives were in one state and liberals were in another. But people change their minds, and factors like immigration are changing the spaces in which we live. We might create new spaces and then find that they don’t solve our problem.

So what about California? The Inland Empire, the Central Valley, Berkeley and the Bay, and the Far North are all viable self-contained entities. Then there is the loosely connected five-county metro area of Southern California. So, if we’re going to start dividing, we should be divided into at least five parts.

And that’s fine, as long as no one thinks that dividing up California will solve any of the major issues facing the state (taxes, redistricting, legislative gridlock, and so on). That said, it would at least help remedy one thing: a lack of equality in the U.S. Senate, where a Wyoming resident has 70 times the power of a Californian. Dividing California by five would lower that ratio to merely 14 times the power of a Californian.

William A.V. Clark is distinguished professor of geography at UCLA.

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