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holly crap you are right, didnt see that post, either he doesnt know what he is talking about or hes been smoking crack for quite a while and he damaged his brain
It's addressed all of them to varying extents. There's a much larger downtown population than before, there's been extensions of transit lines (and the building of an entirely new one), the implementation of bus rapid transit, the opening of a lot of stores in the urban setting, the building of the LA Live megacomplex, road diets and services like that, massive changes in zoning regulations (this is probably the most important thing that happened), a voluntary passing of a mass transit-oriented tax on themselves in 2008 (also massive), and a few other things along the way. These are pretty significant changes.
All good steps to take.
But the issue is that Los Angeles has fundamental design issues that will make it very challenging to offer a lifestyle anything close to Boston, Philly or DC. For example, what do you do with all of the restaurants that have parking lots? Do you confiscate the property by eminent domain so that something else can be built there? That's obviously not going to happen. And the existing houses on single-family lots...what are you going to do with those? You just can't bulldoze them and build a whole bunch of 8-floor apartment complexes with retail on the bottom because a few guys on C-D want to have more fun. What about commercial strips that have no residences on top? Do you raze those and then build apartments on top of them so people can have easier access to amenities? How do you address those design issues?
Quote:
Originally Posted by OyCrumbler
Also, no one claimed that LA blows away every city except NYC. You're asking people to defend a stance they never made.
You might want to check that. I'm not really in the "track down people's quotes and throw them back in their face" mood today. The biggest problem is that people don't understand the difference between "greater than" and "less than." Saying that Los Angeles is less urban than Boston does not mean that's it's not urban at all.
Newark is really damn urban though. I actually like the place a lot though the empty/vacant lots are a bit much in some places, so on that it doesn't fare very well.
the only reason this thread keeps going is because you along with many other NE posters are haters of LA and just dont admit that LA is the most urban of these cities
So if I said that Montgomery, AL is less urban than New York, NY, that makes me a "hater?"
Newark is really damn urban though. I actually like the place a lot though the empty/vacant lots are a bit much in some places, so on that it doesn't fare very well.
But the issue is that Los Angeles has fundamental design issues that will make it very challenging to offer a lifestyle anything close to Boston, Philly or DC. For example, what do you do with all of the restaurants that have parking lots? Do you confiscate the property by eminent domain so that something else can be built there? That's obviously not going to happen. And the existing houses on single-family lots...what are you going to do with those? You just can't bulldoze them and build a whole bunch of 8-floor apartment complexes with retail on the bottom because a few guys on C-D want to have more fun. What about commercial strips that have no residences on top? Do you raze those and then build apartments on top of them so people can have easier access to amenities? How do you address those design issues?
Zoning was changed, property values went up and it was profitable to develop lots that were empty, parking lots, or less dense into greater density--that was pretty much it. Things changed. Also, there was some kind of silver lining with the LA riots in that a lot of the bombed out, more sprawling commercial strip mall lots were redeveloped much more densely than before.
Also, the SFH are only in small pockets in the core, and that's where most of the change is happening. Apartment complexes are where the majority live. It still effectively makes for dense housing. Los Angeles generally has corners and arterial roads for commercial activity, but the dense residential areas are immediately right off of those arterial roads (and oftentimes, you can walk to several of these arterial roads from your home) rather than building residences directly on top of the commercial buildings (also, a lot of these corner/arterial road commercial places are multiple stories or complexes of commercial/retail). It doesn't look the same as east coast cities (though in places within the heart of downtown do look like east coast cities), but it still functions very similarly in terms of dense development and walkable areas.
Quote:
Originally Posted by BajanYankee
You might want to check that. I'm not really in the "track down people's quotes and throw them back in their face" mood today. The biggest problem is that people don't understand the difference between "greater than" and "less than." Saying that Los Angeles is less urban than Boston does not mean that's it's not urban at all.
Fine, maybe some did, I don't agree with them and probably most people, even those are arguing that LA is urban, has stated that it blows the other cities out of the water.
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