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Only an idiot would ever say that without its buildings Philadelphia would be one open field. Stop acting like a five-year old. It's really, really sad to see.
Yup.. that's exactly what I said. Nope, Center City wasn't manufactured because it was originally Philadelphia's boundaries, and all of those buildings you see came about naturally, around plenty of rowhome-lined streets. Care to speak out of your ass some more?
Not think.. I am smart. I don't need to prove it to any of you. You think I give a F what anybody thinks or says? Unlike you people, I'm not spineless. I'm perfectly capable of standing on my own because I am a man with a set of balls.
As I said in the other thread.. I'm done with this. You delusional homers keep going with this all you like. You have absolutely no clue what you are talking about whatsoever.
Everyone knows rowhomes are natural, and apartment complexes aren't, I was just going to plant a Rowhome seed in my back yard.
Though Oy, I am curious as to your thoughts, why on feel does LA feel somehow less urban in comparative density and less walkable?
There are good swaths of walkable city (especially as the weather is really nice year-round which is supposedly LA's selling point), but the issue is that LA really did abandon much of its urban core for decades (people moved out, buildings became mostly vacant, streets became empty save for cars, smog became terrible in the thick of the basin driving even more people to want to move out), and walking became less common as there were simply fewer people living in the area to do the walking--if you look at pictures of pre-60s Los Angeles, you would see the sidewalks teaming with life at all times of day. This was also because of the massive streetcar system that Los Angeles used to have (formerly the most extensive in the nation).
It takes a lot to recover from such a quick and thorough abandonment of the core. Added to that is the widening of roads for cars that occurred in various parts of the city over the last half decade and the change in infrastructure in various places from storefront to the edge of the sidewalk to little strip mall parking lots. Not all of the core became like this, but a significant enough amount had this happen to break up a lot of the formerly nice walking continuity.
Really though, it's a fairly recent thing that Los Angeles's urban structure had changed so much (and even more recent that it's slowly changing back). Early pictures of Los Angeles has it look much more like a traditional East Coast city--and it's only in recent years that Los Angeles has recovered its urbanity though in slightly different form.
Quote:
Originally Posted by couldntthinkofaclevername
No... what I'm saying is that if you took away the apartment buildings and the manufactured "urban" things like the downtown, that it would not be urban. So no, not even remotely the same thing. Also.. that's the funny thing.. even without its buildings, Philadelphia would still be urban. Stop acting like a child.
Doesn't seem to compute because you don't agree with it. You can't manufacture "urban" with apartment complexes when the rest is all suburban sprawl.
Yes, it does. It's important to note that I've been saying that this whole time, and if you want to go outside of city limits well I already showed you an aerial of Upper Darby, which blows LA's "urban" out of the water. So nope.. don't think so. Within Philadelphia's metro are hundreds of completely independent municipalities, including very dense cities like Camden, Wilmington, and Chester to name a few.
Nope.. not true. Stop trying to say every metro is like LA because they aren't. And nope.. it isn't comparable.
Funny thing is I never said that. Stop acting like a child.
West Chester is an independent borough.
Yup, I did say that, and it's still true.
You know exactly what I'm talking about. You don't get to make up some fantasy rules that somehow make LA urban. It's not urban by any standards nor compared to any actually urban city. Nope, definitely not a Philly booster. The only person trying to discredit anybody is YOU LA Boosters, and I'm not letting you do it.
Nope, I'm not.
And your downtown is a manufactured "urban" area. So nope.. doesn't qualify your city as urban.
Where exactly am I acting like a child? How does it make sense to go about saying that if you took out the buildings that make up the city, then it is no longer a city for Los Angeles, but yet that logic doesn't apply to Philadelphia? What happens if Philadelphia lost all its rowhomes? Well, I guess the same thing that would happen if you took out all of Los Angeles's apartment complexes--an evaporation of the city since we're deciding to say there is no there there anymore.
Would you like to clarify on how Los Angeles's downtown is manufactured? As in it's made my man?
And yes, we've already gone through that Los Angeles has a lot of sprawl--but there's still the point to address that Los Angeles has a large area (large enough to be comparable to the urban areas of the other cities in contention, but still a fairly small percentage of the overall city) that is not sprawl. At least try to address the individual points when you're responding, because a declaration of this simply being wrong is lacking in a logical argument to back it.
I understand having a hard time grappling with Los Angeles, though the stats show it to be matching or even exceeding the density of the other cities in contention in a greater or equal area, it certainly doesn't look at all like any of those cities. Instead of rowhomes, the apartment complexes range from two to six floors with a small little garden abutting the sidewalk, but then extend far back in their lots and accommodating a lot of units. A lot of the single-family houses within the denser areas are really tiny with pretty much no backyard or with a tiny drive-way next door that goes to another abutting single-family home right behind it. There is a good number of fairly huge residential mid-rises/high-rises that house a lot of people on a relatively small footprint. These all allow for a fairly dense and urban city with a tight packing of both people and amenities in a small space. And it's true that very little of Los Angeles resembles the other cities being mentioned. However, how this equates to Los Angeles (especially its core where all the above conditions are seen in large quantities) now not being urban or having a "manufactured" downtown is pretty loose.
[quote=kidphilly;22764446]Nor is LA. CC absolutely is more desirable today than DTLA or the areas directly around it. Further out some good and some bad. The biggest difference is in the core where Philly has just about its most desireable city nabe (Chestnut is wealthier but not the density nor throngs of young singles), the same can not be said for LA but see a bright for this area of LA. And that aspect also plays into the LADT; and why it doesnt quite compare on many aspects to other DTs even with density.
Does everything desireable have to be bland, white and yuppyfied? Sometimes I head over to Santee Alley in dt LA or to Alvarada in MacArthur Park to stroll the streets, eating the food from the street vendors or listening to music or just chilling in the grass reading a book. When you say undesireable, its not exactly like the ghettos of North Philadelphia where you simply stay out of.
Also I walk the streets of LA every day and last week I took a walk down Wilshire Blvd from Crenshaw vd to dt LA. There is not a break of any kind, just a continuation of people walking up and down Wilshire along with apts, businesses, churches, highrises, a couple of subway stations. What exactly makes this less urban than any of the cities listed? And that even goes for Sunset from dt or 6th.
LA is sort of a mixed bag. Parts of it are very urban and walkable and then other parts are suburban with freeways cutting up the neighborhoods and then there are parts that look rural with no sidewalks and infrastructure in place.
CC and parts of south Philly, are the only areas that are both urban and desirable.
Northern Liberties, University City, Wynnefield, Manayunk, East Falls and Mount Airy are all desirable neighborhoods and would be considered urban by most standards.
Quote:
Originally Posted by couldntthinkofaclevername
I'm not sure who told you that but it is 100% patently false.
You didn't read my post. Philadelphia cracked the 1 million mark during the 1890 Census. This was well before the prominence of the automobile and well before the advent of the modern-day "suburb" as we know it. If Philadelphia's population was 1.5 million people in 1910 (which is about what it is today), that 1.5 million would probably comprise 70 or 80 percent of the people that lived in the area (today it's only 25 percent). In contrast, Los Angeles was virtually desert in 1890 when Philadelphia had over a million people. When the city really began to boom in the 20th Century, you had the surrounding counties and municipalities growing as fast as the city. The City of Los Angeles never really had the monopoly on its region the way Philadelphia has had. This probably goes a long way in explaining why the cities are laid out so differently.
Last edited by BajanYankee; 01-30-2012 at 08:09 AM..
Does everything desireable have to be bland, white and yuppyfied? Sometimes I head over to Santee Alley in dt LA or to Alvarada in MacArthur Park to stroll the streets, eating the food from the street vendors or listening to music or just chilling in the grass reading a book. When you say undesireable, its not exactly like the ghettos of North Philadelphia where you simply stay out of.
Also I walk the streets of LA every day and last week I took a walk down Wilshire Blvd from Crenshaw vd to dt LA. There is not a break of any kind, just a continuation of people walking up and down Wilshire along with apts, businesses, churches, highrises, a couple of subway stations. What exactly makes this less urban than any of the cities listed? And that even goes for Sunset from dt or 6th.
Absolutely not and this is strong point of Philly to me. While there are some posh enclaves by and large there is still quite an edge to Philly (to me LA overall as well) compared to a Boston for example. One thing that I rarely hear about Philly is bland, dirty (think this carries from the 90s), gritty absolutely but bland is not a way I typically hear Philly described; most would say edgy actually
While parts of CC are yuppiefied I dont think they are bland; even an area like RS where there are posh enclaves the vibe on the street is not bland at all, a very diverse crowd actually completed intertwined
There are parts of LA that yes I simply stay out of, no reason to be there for me personally. And there are parts I do venture into, as a visitor I suspect most would not, probably a similar dynamic.
Oddly many parts of North Philly are changing quickly (esp the area between CC and Temple, which will have 30K students living on or around the campus in the next ten years) but far too many parts of N Philly that are quite ghetto, visually look as bad as any place in the country.
On your last points it isnt that I dont find LA's DT unurban by any measure it just doesnt have the same overall energy and amount of amentities concentrated. This may be a function of the spread of amentities in LA; like all things has its positives and negatives
Nor is LA. CC absolutely is more desirable today than DTLA or the areas directly around it. Further out some good and some bad. The biggest difference is in the core where Philly has just about its most desireable city nabe (Chestnut is wealthier but not the density nor throngs of young singles), the same can not be said for LA but see a bright for this area of LA. And that aspect also plays into the LADT; and why it doesnt quite compare on many aspects to other DTs even with density.
Does everything desireable have to be bland, white and yuppyfied? Sometimes I head over to Santee Alley in dt LA or to Alvarada in MacArthur Park to stroll the streets, eating the food from the street vendors or listening to music or just chilling in the grass reading a book. When you say undesireable, its not exactly like the ghettos of North Philadelphia where you simply stay out of.
Also I walk the streets of LA every day and last week I took a walk down Wilshire Blvd from Crenshaw vd to dt LA. There is not a break of any kind, just a continuation of people walking up and down Wilshire along with apts, businesses, churches, highrises, a couple of subway stations. What exactly makes this less urban than any of the cities listed? And that even goes for Sunset from dt or 6th.
LA is a concrete jungle and is very urban over a large area but the issue here is structural density compared to cities of the east coast. LA is not compact at all even in its DT area, where most cities have buildings seamed together. LA's street scape also looks suburban. Wilshire Blvd would be a highway in cities like DC and Boston.
Location: Mentally been many places but I'm PHILLY's own
3 posts, read 6,011 times
Reputation: 13
Quote:
Originally Posted by DC's Finest
DT DC is a different animal. It's hard to compare it to other cities. It serves as the third largest DT behind NYC and the Chicago for commercial office space. It also serves as a top tourist destination with all the monuments and museums surrounding the National Mall. And lastly, the Federal Government footprint in DT DC is huge and largely contributes to some less than vibrant areas because of their security ban on retail space. I get the point that DT DC is not as vibrant or retail oriented as SF, Philly and Boston. But look at the role it plays within the region and the country. Museums and monuments aren't sexy when it pertains to nightlife. But none of the cities mentioned can touch DT DC 's urbanity. Canyons upon canyons of office buildings. SF, Boston and Philly don't have that in a large area like DC does.
Philadelphia has the 3rd largest downtown
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