Put Cal in San Francisco, to start
For the latter half of the 19th century until the early parts of the 20th century San Francisco and not LA was the US's major west coast city. How can we have kept things that way?
1) Put Cal in San Francisco, to start;
2) Have Stanford fold when it (historically) almost went bankrupt;
3) Have the City expand southward down the Peninsula to Santa Clara; the 1906 quake might actually be the catalyst for this, in terms of creating a "garden metropolis" without tall buildings to avoid earthquake liability and greenbelts to prevent firestorms; ties in neatly with the trollery car and suburban railway boom;
4) Make peace between the city's financial class and labor leaders;
5) Have the City's fathers and Legislators turn themselves inside out to:
a) Keep the Bay Area the industrial and shipbuilding center on the West Coast, period;
b) Keep the Bay Area the defense/military/naval center on the West Coast;
c) make the Bay Area the center of aviation on the West Coast, not Los Angeles;
6) Have the SFPUC purchase the water rights in the Owens Valley and trade them to SCE for the western slope; use the western slope water rights to make San Francisco interests paramount in the San Joaquin Valley;
There's a start.
Best,