LAUSD Board Member Nick Melvoin reflects on the structural challenges shaping the future of the nation’s second-largest school district, discussing the fiscal implications of one-time federal ESSER funding, pressures of labor negotiations in a high-cost region, and the long-term sustainability of a district that now serves roughly 400,000 students—down from nearly 700,000 two decades ago.

Beth Silverman, Lotus Campaign’s co-founder and executive director, shares the organization’s market-driven model for addressing homelessness by aligning the real estate sector, social service providers, and individuals seeking stable housing. Beth explains how Lotus, launched in 2018 in Charlotte, North Carolina, reduces landlord risk through financial guarantees and support services while expanding access to existing housing in “neighborhoods of opportunity.”

As Los Angeles pushes to meet City Council housing targets, rebuild after climate-driven disasters, and gear up for the 2028 Olympic and Paralympic Games, LA City Planning Director Vince Bertoni delivers a pragmatic assessment of both progress and limits.

As wildfire rebuilding, affordability pressures, and labor constraints converge, off-site construction is moving from niche solution to market necessity. In this interview, Founder and CEO of Plant Prefab, Steve Glenn, reflects on two decades in industrialized housing, tracing how prefab has evolved from design experimentation to a delivery-driven business shaped by automation, permitting frameworks, and capital discipline.

In his State of the City address, San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie described the city as a “city on the rise” while outlining an agenda focused on making recent progress durable and broadly shared. Highlighting declines in crime, a strengthened police pipeline, expanded treatment capacity, and a coordinated recovery-first approach to fentanyl and homelessness, Lurie tied improved street conditions to signs of economic resurgence downtown, increased tourism and conference activity, and major global events ahead.

A personal mentor, Bob Foster, across two decades of meetings and interviews with our newsletters, is remembered less as a politician reacting to events than as an authentic, one-of-a-kind, systems thinker insisting on preparedness, institutional clarity, and physical reality. Whether speaking as President of Southern California Edison, Chair of the California ISO, or Mayor of Long Beach, Foster returned to the same uncomfortable truth: modern society depends on infrastructure that must be planned years in advance, paid for honestly, and governed without illusion.

FPH2’s Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Jason Caudle explains how California’s hydrogen market is shifting from policy anticipation to market execution. As cities, transit agencies, and suppliers align around offtake, Caudle outlines how FPH2 is aggregating demand, supporting bankable supply, and keeping momentum in the hydrogen market moving forward.