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The Gaslamp district can be pretty crowded at times, weekends, large conventions (was actually there last during comicon and was crazy (little did I know my work trip coincided) but are these places or shopping districts or historical districts etc. always the best barometer. I mean you cant totally discount them but are multi-dimensional neighborhood or even mixed residential amenity laden neighborhoods more the vibe of a city so-to-speak.
Last time I was in San Diego I stayed near Little Italy on one side of downtown and walked to the Gaslamp District a few times. Little Italy was fairly active, the Gaslamp always had a lot of people but the whole area in between seemed fairly quiet. It wasn't dead and there's a good amount of high-rise residential there, but it felt less busy. San Diego has some very busy sort of touristy areas near downtown though that would skew the overall feel. San Diego has done a pretty good job though of building more residential density near their core.
Well one thing is clear. I give Philadelphia real, no disclaimer complements. You however don't have the capacity to do that for DC. A complement for DC by you consists of DC does that well. Or, DC is doing a lot of that.
My complements for Philly consist of:
Wow, I'm so happy for Philly!
Good for Philly! It's on fire!
But.....
To get that for DC, you would actually have to feel that way....
It wasn't really obvious to me before I visited this forum that Philadelphia or Boston were exceptional in "urbanity". I thought of them as rather average for a big city. For a poorly domestic traveled Northeasterner, it's not obvious that they're atypical. They certainly feel less a less congested alternative to New York City, so a compromise "urbanity".
I grew up near San Francisco, so as a kid my standard of "urbanity" was San Francisco until I started travelling more. Like the scale of San Francisco was just the baseline for being a city, nowhere else in the west really seemed to have that busy dense feel to it. Then I spent time in Chicago and New York and international cities and it brings a whole new perspective, that while San Francisco is really unique for a West Coast city(well it's unique in many ways), overall it's just one of many cities.
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Somehow I expected Portland to resemble Boston a bit more, I knew it wouldn't, but I was still surprised. Maybe not the narrow streets, but shouldn't most cities have some North End-ish scaled district in their center? I know it sounds dumb but that's what I'm used to.
Yes of course a city like Portland never had an area close to as dense as the North End. Though at one point in history there was a lot more people living right in the center of the city. A lot was actually lost to urban renewal on the southern end of downtown and then the northern end basically became sort of a skid row district. That's basically what happened to a lot of US cities, what denser urban areas they had sort of ended up like that and only recently has been rediscovered. Not as much as the Northeastern cities of course to begin with, but looking at a lot of cities, you once had much "urban" feeling cores with more activity--that only now are starting to come back. Portland is a little better off just because they started trying to re-invest in downtown back in the 70s, which was slightly ahead of the curve compared to similar cities. Also because some West Coast cities are geographically constrained by hills or water so real estate near the core was more valuable than cities with no geographic barriers.
What about Vancouver? People don't talk about it as much and it looks it has more. Especially if you really think high rises are all you need for a great edge city. Enough high rises?
Canadian cities seem a lot more eager to build up, even in the suburbs. There's several other suburbs of Vancouver where you'll see fairly tall residential along main avenues. Richmond has really been built up though recently--I think also in part because you have a very large Asian population that isn't afraid of living in high-rise condos in the suburbs(compared to Hong Kong or China, those high-rises are fairly spacious).
Last time I was in San Diego I stayed near Little Italy on one side of downtown and walked to the Gaslamp District a few times. Little Italy was fairly active, the Gaslamp always had a lot of people but the whole area in between seemed fairly quiet. It wasn't dead and there's a good amount of high-rise residential there, but it felt less busy. San Diego has some very busy sort of touristy areas near downtown though that would skew the overall feel. San Diego has done a pretty good job though of building more residential density near their core.
yes think it will only improve, getting more people out is always a good thing
I find it so interesting that a single restaurant and/or bar can start to transform an area at times - in this case a whole restaurant/bar area
Can we hear about DC suburbs first though? I hear they've got great edge cities and TOD.
I just checked with the internets...nothing.
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