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^^ Yes, people do talk about high density sprawl. This is what you find in CA.
"sprawl," though, doesn't really have a consistent meaning. Let's agree that there is "no way to argue Miami as being more sprawled than LA or SF" because there is no way to argue that anywhere is more sprawled than any other until we determine what we're talking about.
Usually, people talk about density because it's at least somewhat precise.
"I get what you're saying with CSA being a much larger area but LA as a whole is a much larger area. Those numbers exist for a reason and believe it or not the US Census is in a better position than you are to decide those boundaries."
^^ The US Census doesn't use CSA's to calculate density or to determine what places are more "sprawled." Again, you'd have to be a fool to think that the LA CSA's area measurements have any relevance to the actual urban experience. In other words, I'm starting to think you are a fool .
"Pretty much any city with a large CSA is by definition a place with lots of Urban Sprawl. When the conversation for LA is to include Inland Empire or not, when you have to ask for San Francisco if San Jose is being included or not. Or Tampa with Sarasota. Even Orlando with Clermont.."
^^I'm sorry but this statement doesn't actually mean anything.
The way the US Census Bureau defines a CSA and MSA is by a given percentage of people that commute from to another city. Saying Riverside is in LA's CSA means that a decent percentage of Riverside commutes to LA.
Urban Sprawl is defined primarily by car dependency and extended commute times. Urban Sprawl can take on further meaning when you look at what develops as a result namely strip malls, parking lots, and freeways.
It is fairly safe though not 100% accurate to say that the US Census is in fact looking at Urban Sprawl when they look at things like CSA as the two are intrinsically linked. It is defined less by how dense or not dense the outlying areas are and more to do with where the job market is.
Los Angeles was one of the world's first low density urbanized areas, resulting from its large geographic metropolitan area. Due to the threat of earthquakes, the city couldn't build upward so it built outward. This in turn, caused wide automobile ownership from residents so they could effectively traverse the large region. However, Los Angeles has become more dense over the past half-century, principally due to small lot zoning and a high demand for housing due to population growth. The city of Los Angeles has increased its density rate up to approximately 7,000 people per square mile in the year 2000, however that is still substantially less than New York City's 27,000 average, San Francisco's 17,000 average, and Chicago's 12,000 average. Land consumption per resident in 2000 was 0.11-acre (450 m2), which made the entire Los Angeles metropolitan area the most densely populated urbanized area in the United States.[16] It should be pointed out, however, that average density is not the only measure of sprawl; some urbanists argue that the city's car-dependent, decentralized form is itself a type of "sprawl" development.
Urban Sprawl originally IMPLIED low density sprawl but never was it an explicit trait. The explicit trait is where the car dependency and job locations, LA increasing in population has not changed this which is shown in every single article you will ever see.
On the other hand I've yet to see a single article that shows Miami as being more sprawled than LA.
There's a difference between density and urban models. Just because something is denser doesn't mean that's it's more urban.
CA is famous for its dense suburbia. Lots and lots of single family houses on teeny tiny lots. You can cram a lot of people in that model but it doesn't make it walkable. It's still very much auto dependent. You are correct that Los Angeles is more dense overall but, from I have seen, much of that density comes from the aforementioned model.
In Miami, many suburban areas are much looser but the urban areas are a completely different model. I dare say that there is a higher percentage of people in greater Miami living in a walkable urban community of dense multi-family housing. This is especially true along the water (The long Atlantic Coast, both sides of the Bay, Downtown Miami and on some of the Islands in the Bay itself.
I know that Los Angeles has dense urban neighborhoods too but, from my experience, it doesn't seem to be at the percentage that exists in Miami. That's just my perception. Anyone is welcome to take it or leave it.
I agree that neither Los Angeles nor Miami is San Francisco. San Franciso is in a different league IMO. It's more like Manhattan than anything else in CA or FL. South Beach in Miami Beach more approximates SF than anything I have seen in greater Los Angeles. It's a tiny land mass that's developed in an urban model that is very pedestrian friendly....that is to say if you don't get run over by Miami's horrible drivers.
No. Almost all of West LA is a walkable environment and easily accesible with their bus system. I once walked from my hotel at Hollywood/Highland to Rodeo Drive (we caught a taxi back though...long walk). LA has very dense sprawl and there are tons of sidewalks and crosswalks that make it easier to travel by foot in a lot of the city. Miami is like a smaller version of LA's urban area though.
Nah... see this is exactly why I separated Inland Empire from LA. Because CSA's are based on counties which in southern california are the size of states. Look at a map of counties out here and you'll understand that it's absolutely absurd to make county-based comparisons (especially when attempting to make comparisons about density).
To say that LA is 33,954 square miles is like saying that all of the gators in the everglades live in miami. The VAST majority of the territory in LA, Riverside, and San bernardino counties is desert or mountains. Orange county is the only majority urbanized county.
Look at this map. The eastern counties stretch OFF THE MAP. Far beyond where the LA metro area is. Saying that people in Barstow and Palm Springs commute to LA is like saying San Diegans commute to LA:
If you want accurate representation of the inhabited CSA, add up all of the major contiguous UA's in the 5 county area:
Los Angeles
11,789,487
1667.9 Riverside SB
1,506,816
438.8 Lancaster Palmdale
263,532
90.4 Oxnard
337,591
75.7 Thousand Oaks
210,990
86.2 Santa Clarita
170,481
54.3 Simi Valley
112,345
27.1
The South Florida MSA is over 6,000 square miles, not 890.
The LA five-county CSA, at 524 people per square mile, is mathematically "less dense" than South Florida's whopping 890 people per square mile. But this is like comparing the densities of states. You'd have to be a fool to do that.
I'm not making any value judgments when I say that CA's urban areas are much more densely populated than Florida's.
I just want to get the facts straight so people realize that they are actually reacting to the high-density of CA urban areas when they call them "sprawled." Houses are packed very tight in CA, so you actually can see the urbanized area as a contiguous entity. Tightly-packed sprawl is "in your face" compared to the leafy, less dense suburbs of other regions. In most of the US outside of the west, populations are much more dispersed, making it more difficult to see the metropolis as coherent and so people perceive them as being less sprawled.
South Florida has the same dense sprawl as LA/SD/Bay Area. The further West you go in South Florida(Closer to the glades) the more monotonous dense sprawl you see, kinda like Riverside, San Bernardino, going out towards the desert. It's hard to determine which one of these metro is more walkable than the other, both have walkable areas, and miles, and miles of suburban sprawl.
The main difference though is, people don't commute to Miami from West Palm Beach and Fort Lauderdale, the same way they do from Riverside/San Bernardino and Orange County to Los Angeles. LA seems to be the focal point of the CSA, while Miami is merely the largest city in the CSA and not really the focal point of commuting.
Fort Lauderdale and West Palm Beach have there own suburbs where people commute from to get to those cities, rather than driving all the way to Miami, like some one in OC would do towards LA.
In that sense, I guess SoFla is more like the Bay Area in which Oakland residents work in Oakland, San Fran residents work in San Fran, and San Jose residents work in San Jose.
The main difference though is, people don't commute to Miami from West Palm Beach and Fort Lauderdale, the same way they do from Riverside/San Bernardino and Orange County to Los Angeles. LA seems to be the focal point of the CSA, while Miami is merely the largest city in the CSA and not really the focal point of commuting.
I feel like endersdrift just got done arguing that LA was MORE polycentric and hence "more sprawled." Which one is it?
Riverside/SB is an outlier in southern california because as a UA it never really established its own sustaining industry. It was planned to be a high tech cluster like OC and it was expected that the warehousing industry would spawn other economic activity. Basically, it's a severely economically depressed urban area that happens to be adjacent to a few other merely economically troubled urban areas. People in the inland empire commute to OC and LA much more than people in OC/LA/Ventura commute to each other. Lancaster/Palmdale is similar but actually has more local jobs compared to its population.
Also, I just want to point out how patently false this "history" is: "Los Angeles was one of the world's first low density urbanized areas, resulting from its large geographic metropolitan area. Due to the threat of earthquakes, the city couldn't build upward so it built outward. This in turn, caused wide automobile ownership from residents so they could effectively traverse the large region."
LA had a large metro early on because it had lots of oil which it could use to make electricity cheaply, which it used to power the famous red car interurban lines that established LA's far-flung semi-urban form. Plenty of other places had land. LA just had the means early on to give cheap access to it.
It wasn't until the 1933 Long Beach Earthquake that people thought LA was susceptible to large quakes. SF was considered "where earthquakes happened."Height limits were imposed in 1906 not because of earthquakes, but because the city leaders wanted the sunshine to get down to the street level. It was the same reasoning behind NYC's famous 1916 zoning resolution.
California's urban areas - San Francisco, Oakland, Berkeley, Central Los Angeles, downtown San Diego, even downtown Sacramento and downtown San Jose - are more urban and walkable than almost anywhere in Florida, aside from Miami. And Miami has a TON of unwalkable sprawl. South Beach is the only real exception, and it's not very big.
The Miami area cannot have much sprawl due to the Everglades to the West and Ocean to the East. There is no where else to grow. What sprawl exist in Miami is just about the maximum amount the city will ever see. Miami will only grow up and more urban.
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