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I live in Northridge (22 miles NNW of DTLA in the San Fernando Valley) right now, and I commute everyday to Downtown LA WHOLLY by transit because my office pays for my TAP (Metro) card. It's actually pretty nice avoiding all the LA traffic. Plus, whenever I feel like going to happy hour, I can because I'm not driving and the trains run until 2 AM now
The problem is gasoline is too expenisive. We wont be using a new fuel source anytime soon. Traffic is too congested aswell. Look at the 405.. Holy sh*!
Transit is alot better overall. More walking, less sitting, less antisocial, no more using cars as a status symbol and wider streets for people.
Yeah, yeah, cars are pure evil--UNTIL you actually need one. Then they're not so bad. I don't think posters on city-data appreciate how many of the conveniences they take for granted everyday come as a result of the automobile. If Manhattan hadn't retrofitted for the car, it'd be a dead city right now. A relic of times past.
DC, Philly, and even Baltimore can. LA is suburban....
LOL DC, Phily, and Baltimore are small cities compared to LA. The only reasonable city ahead of LA is NYC and maybe Chicago in the core and that's it. If you don't live in one of those two cities then don't talk about suburban!
RCL has proven countless times that LA's density detroys DC and speaking of DC why isn't it being compared to a more realistic rival like San Francisco instead of the megacity of LA?
No, actually, I live in the NE which is superior to the west coast in urban design so that's why I said that. Also, you are looking at the city as a whole which yes, San Fran is more urban from a total city standpoint only because it lacks open space or zoning challenges DC has dealt with. Hills in any city detract from urbanity period. You haven't shown or "sounded" like you know anything about planning so it's laughable you would try to call me out. You don't even talk like a planner? Where do you work? I haven't heard you say one thing about pedestrian scale or street interaction which leads me to believe you may be lying about being a planner. Or you just aren't very good.
Have you ever even been to SF? Doesn't sound like you have spent much if any time there at all. SF lacks open space? 18% of SF is park land verus 19.4% for DC. Wow a whole wopping 1.4% of more park land! You really think that actually makes a difference? SF is more urban from any standpoint, DC simply doesn't have the density SF has and that is just the way it was built, between 1870 through 1930 it had more people thus more dense development. Stop making excuses for DC being less urban despite it's "advantage" being flat. You think people want to walk far in a city that hilly? Perhaps the hills actually helped make it denser than it otherwise might have been so people didn't have to travel as far.
Maybe SF would be closer to NYC if it didn't have hills but the fact is the hills didn't stop it from being more urban than cities flatter than it like DC. Take your head out of a textbook and focus on the reality of hte situation.
And you totally sound like some "know it all college kid" who just rehashes everything a textbook and their professor told them, you clearly lack some real world experience. Where do I work? I don't "talk like a planner"? Give me a break kid! So I guess when I don't agree with your BS assertion instead of actually trying to argue against what I am saying you attack my credentials, yup showing the age there. So how soon do you graduate? Also did I ever say I was an urban planner? I have a degree in Urban Studies and Planning and have worked as a planner, but I never specified what kind of planning that was. Perhaps at your young age you are not aware of all the different types of planners.
L.A.'s core 15-20 sq miles compete with Chicago, Philly and San Francisco in density. The demographics are wildly different (but slowly changing), and the spotlight rarely shines on these areas, but that doesn't mean they don't exist.
Again, LA's sprawling consistent low density development is favorable for useless density comparisons that draw a circle around an area. This is why LA still doesn't feel urban. That's the difference when you factor in built environment.
India has some of the most dense cities in the world and they aren't urban at all.
I live in Northridge (22 miles NNW of DTLA in the San Fernando Valley) right now, and I commute everyday to Downtown LA WHOLLY by transit because my office pays for my TAP (Metro) card. It's actually pretty nice avoiding all the LA traffic. Plus, whenever I feel like going to happy hour, I can because I'm not driving and the trains run until 2 AM now
I will take pictures of my commute home today.
The big difference between DC, Boston, NYC, Chi-Town, etc. and LA is that no one from those cities would ever make a post like this. Taking transit to and from work is about as remarkable as taking a dump. When you make comments like this, that's when you know a city's lacking a true transit culture.
"I commute wholly by transit from Silver Spring to Downtown DC because my job pays for it. I even transfer at Gallery Place! See, people DO ride transit in the DC Metro area!! Who says it isn't possible?!?"
LA is changing, but it is definitely not Manhattanizing. It is simply becoming a more dense, transit-friendly version of what it was before, a poly-nodal mega city. This is not taking from the "Northeast" model - it is simply out of necessity.
If it becomes a transit-friendly city it will centralize. Centralization is more convenient for a transit city.
But on the other hand, the secondary cores are defined in relation to downtown – west (Santa Monica, UCLA), north (Burbank), south (Long Beach), and so on. It’s not like the organic buildup of agglomeration that merged the various cities of the Ruhr into one megaregion, or the merger of the metro areas of New York and Newark, or on a larger scale San Francisco and San Jose. Instead, these secondary cores emerged as secondary to Downtown LA, and only became big because Downtown LA’s transportation capacity is limited by the lack of rapid transit. Put another way, a transit revival in Los Angeles that includes rapid transit construction would make Los Angeles more downtown-oriented rather than less.
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