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Due to the polycentric character of LA and it's metro area, Downtown LA is nowhere near what might be expected for the downtown of the US's second largest city (it's share of regional employment is something like 3%).
However, compared to most US cities it's still a quite sizable central business/culture/historic district, and feels very much like the "heart" of at least a good chunk of Los Angeles.
I've never been able to come up with a good comparison city for what downtown feels like: it may not be Chicago... but is it Pittsburgh? Minneapolis? St. Louis?
Curious as to what others think.
To clarify, I'm not talking about just the skyline, but a mix of variables: size of buildings, intact-ness of urban fabric, vibrancy of street life, maybe historic structures, etc. There will obviously be multiple ways of going about this, but I'm hoping you have some opinions as to "Downtown LA feels about as 'big' as downtown x." There may just not be a good comparison, so maybe "it's somewhere between downtown x and downtown y" would make sense.
LA has many "downtowns" and I eventually want to figure out what each of them compares to (Long Beach is very similar to Oakland, but I'm not sure if it's downtown can directly be compared), but that's for a different thread.
No. No its not. Miami is far more urban than LA in the downtown area. LA is more like Dallas.
I have to admit I've never been to either Miami or Dallas, but on google satellite and streetview both of their downtowns appear to be less vibrant than LA's, with more land taken up by surface parking lots and with fewer blocks of consistent pedestrian-scale buildings. Flagler in downtown Miami does look a lot like Broadway in downtown LA, but the number of pedestrians and overall traffic doesn't look the same. Maybe it was just a bad day when the google car went through (you never know...).
^^ I need to take look at Houston... that might make sense. Houston was much smaller than LA pre-WWII so it doesn't have the same old-timey grandeur that LA does along Broadway, 7th, Spring, etc.. but I would imagine the effective size of the skyscrapers, the number of blocks, and general "feel" is quite similar in both (i.e. you feel like you are in the same size city). From Google sattelite, it is clear that Houston has significantly more surface parking lots, though.
Also, it's very interesting that both downtowns have the same diagonal layout (as opposed to North/south). In LA it was because of the Spanish Law of the Indies... but Houston was founded by Americans. Does anyone know why Houston's axis is tilted at almost the same angle as LA's?
Los Angeles' downtown wholesale districts do not exist anywhere in North America except New York City itself. The jewelry district, the toy district, the garment district, and so on. Only NY and LA have that.
Downtown Houston is comparable to Downtown Los Angeles.
They're practically splitting images of each other.
Houston and Los Angeles differ a lot on the street level in my opinion. Houston's historic core is much smaller and the skyscraper don't really have anything anchoring their bases and connecting them together.
Los Angeles has a very densely packed downtown. As you can see in the picture there are really only two large parking lots (one bottom left, ne middle center) and the rest is mid rise buildings packed in tightly.
Los Angeles' downtown wholesale districts do not exist anywhere in North America except New York City itself. The jewelry district, the toy district, the garment district, and so on. Only NY and LA have that.
I would imagine that if Detroit and St. Louis hadn't demolished so much of their respective downtowns they would be very comparable to LA (at least in the building stock department). Those cities, along with Cleveland, feel grander along some stretches than LA but don't sustain it (due to so much demolition).
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