Los Angeles has had a terrible 2020s so far. First, the epidemic. What followed was a wave of high-profile robberies and the fatal burglary of Jacqueline Avant, which sparked widespread anxiety. Of course, homelessness is a scourge of epic proportions, driven in large part by the housing crisis. Trust in civic leadership to address these social problems is low, especially in the wake of a series of local government scandals. Within the entertainment industry, there have been lengthy strikes followed by mass layoffs as Hollywood scrambles for profits amid shifts in distribution and the onslaught of artificial intelligence. Now, of course, the Palisades and Altadena wildfires have devastated the city.

This is a moment of doom. But this town has been around many times before, and it's important to remember that it didn't just bloom afterward. It thrives.

The previous low was thirty years ago. In the early 1990s, Los Angeles' disaster was perhaps even worse. The end of the Cold War and the economic recession led to the consolidation and relocation of much of the local aerospace industry. Rodney King's verdict sparked violence that left 63 people dead and 2,383 injured. The next year, a fire swept through Malibu, destroying hundreds of homes, and later when an El Niño storm arrived, causing mudslides that closed major coastal routes for months. (That fall, another fire, one of the most destructive in state history at the time, also ripped apart Altadena.) Soon after, the Northridge earthquake killed 57 people and injured 9,000 more, Buildings were damaged throughout the area. It was also the beginning of the producer exodus, which undermined and dispersed Hollywood's working class, as Canada and elsewhere began to actively weaken local economies through tax breaks.

But then the city ushered in a period of extraordinary prosperity: the return of professional football, the renaissance of downtown Los Angeles, the establishment of Silicon Valley Beach. At different times, the vibrancy of its artistic and culinary scenes has been the envy of the country and even the world.

This has a history. In the 1930s, the Great Depression hit the region hard. There is also a prolonged drought, a severe port strike and ongoing tensions between locals and Dust Bowl migrants as social services are affected. Then, starting in the mid-1960s, as the studio system collapsed, the city experienced the Watts Riots, the Manson Family murders, economic stagnation and the deadly Sylmar earthquake. These respective dark times soon led into the Los Angeles boom years of the 1950s and 1980s.

Desert cities, oasis or hell, or both, can't help but come to life. “Los Angeles had always been a boom town,” Carey McWilliams, a distinguished California historian, wrote in 1946, as local postwar prosperity took off, although it “was long unable to consolidate its gains.” .

It's unclear what the immediate future holds for Los Angeles. Perhaps, even likely, there will be more disasters — both in areas we can identify (the housing market worsened by the aftermath of wildfires) and in areas we can't. Still, it is inevitable that the tide will turn.

Some things are already underway. First: the 2026 FIFA World Cup, then the 2028 Summer Olympics. Major public transportation systems are about to come online. The Los Angeles River and its surrounding areas are coming to life. A variety of cultural improvements, expansions and openings—most notably George Lucas’s massive, multibillion-dollar, spaceship-like museum of narrative arts in Exposition Park—are underway. Oh, and it seems the state is finally getting serious about tax credit programs to be competitive in luring entertainment production back to towns.

So, yes, the city's current plot needs a rewrite. Maybe some new characters and new ideas. But this is the story of Los Angeles, there is no ending, just another season.