Flutterby™! :

Oh yeah, that LA quote comes from http://www.faisal.com/quotes/l.html A little ego searching on a new (to me, at least) search engine at http://google.stanford.edu/ reveals this gem:

While it's obvious (to me, at least) that while the real solution to some of the environmental issues we're facing is to at least go for zero population growth, a first step might be to work towards not growing our huge population centers in the middle of the desert and then importing the lacking resources at the expense of ecologies hundreds of miles around. This isn't to say that there aren't advantages for developments such as LA. Concentrating the types of people who actually like smog-filled valleys, non-native foliage and awful sprawling suburbs near fault lines is a good thing.

Unfortunately, while I do remember writing it, I don't remember in what.