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Koreatown is a place that fascinates me, because of reasons. And D.C. seems to get a lot of buzz on here for being urban. I've heard Columbia Heights is the most 'urban', of the neighborhoods within. Discuss
I would say Columbia hgts is more traditionally urban and walkable, the only thing K-Town has on Columbia hgts is density. LA's most urban district IMO is Westlake/Pico-Union but it's rather rundown and not a desirable area by any means.
I live in Koreatown right now (Western/Wilshire area)
Ask any question you want.
Koreatown is pretty urban, and compared to a lot of other areas has a high transit usage. I don't know how you could compare it to Columbia Heights though.
According to Google Maps, Columbia Heights has 1 subway stop (with two very close by) while Koreatown Has two with one really close by (although for all intents and purposes Vermont/Wilshire is in Koreatown).
I would guess that between Wilshire and 14th Street, Koreatown has the more urban thoroughfare. Koreatown is more densely populated, with apartment buildings instead of rowhomes and occasional apartments. Koreatown has more empty or wasted space, and more parking lots (at a quick glance I see none in Columbia Heights), and CH is probably way more pedestrian friendly though both areas are walkable simply by the nature of their density. I think Koreatown has to get some points for its international aspect, as it gives it a little added urban element that at least goes towards cancelling out the at-times poor design.
Overall, seems like a toss up. If you prefer intimate, pedestrian scaled urban environments, Columbia Heights is the choice. If you prefer the hustle-and-bustle of a nearly-CBD environment with highrise office and a mix of high-mid-low rise residential, and don't mind the occasional strip mall or parking lot, or wider streets (though 14th St. is not much narrower than Wilshire) then Koreatown is the more urban choice.
Transit and car ownership data. I did the densest Census tracts in L.A. a long time ago. Some were Koreatown but I can't remember which ones. These are for Columbia Heights.
Census Tract 28.01
56.9% commuted via transit
6.4% walked to work
4.4% biked to work
20.2% drove to work alone
55.7% of HH have no vehicle
Census Tract 28.02
56.2% commuted via transit
9.6% walked to work
7.7% biked to work
15.9% drove to work alone
59.2% of HH have no vehicle
Census Tract 29
50.8% commuted via transit
7.3% walked to work
6.8% biked to work
21.3% drove to work alone
41.4% of HH have no vehicle
Census Tract 36
52.6% commuted via transit
10.7% walked to work
6.2% biked to work
18.9% drove to work alone
42.6% of HH have no vehicle
Koreatown is certainly dense, but doesn't "feel" all that walkable. At least from my experiences there, and admittedly, I was a driver, not a transit user/walker, but parking was abundant and cheap and some of the commercial roads didn't look ped-friendly (Wilshire for one). Not a lot of people visibly walking around, either, except to get from parking to nearby attraction (there are many).
I have no experience with Columbia Heights, however, and so cannot compare, but I can say that Koreatown is really nothing like San Francisco. Maybe the "beige buildings", occasional palm trees, and abundance of Asians, and density on paper, but beyond that there are virtually no other similarities and I don't find Koreatown to be classically urban in any sense.
Someone ran commute numbers for this area of LA recently and it still ran quite car oriented despite being LA's densest and arguably most central/transit-rich corridor.
Not trying to knock LA, by the way, but that IS the way the city/SoCal is in general; not that there's anything necessarily wrong with that (though some of us may think there is ).
Overall, seems like a toss up. If you prefer intimate, pedestrian scaled urban environments, Columbia Heights is the choice. If you prefer the hustle-and-bustle of a nearly-CBD environment with highrise office and a mix of high-mid-low rise residential, and don't mind the occasional strip mall or parking lot, or wider streets (though 14th St. is not much narrower than Wilshire) then Koreatown is the more urban choice.
That's not how I would characterize Columbia Heights. Traffic-wise (car and pedestrian), it is by far one of the most annoying parts of that city. It's the site of the only Target and Best Buy (actually, one of two Best Buys) in Washington, DC and thus draws a lot of people from around the city. It's also a bit of an attraction (though less than U Street/Adams Morgan) for people who live in the suburbs. Most cars parked on the street there won't even have DC tags.
CH used to have a reputation for being very rough. Now it's only a little rough with the occasional homicide and ATF raid.
Still a good deal of low-income housing in the neighborhood. Still a strong Salvadoran presence. There are a lot of rowhouses east of 14th Street but many of those are condo/apartment conversions since they tend to be the larger variety. West of 14th Street is majority (if not exclusively) apartment buildings.
Someone ran commute numbers for this area of LA recently and it still ran quite car oriented despite being LA's densest and arguably most central/transit-rich corridor.
Here's a quick and dirty version using zipcodes that overlap both neighborhoods.
I understand that this captures more than Koreatown. One bone posters may have to pick with me is that the lower density Hancock Park neighborhood falls within the 90004 zip code, which skews the data in a negative way (DC's 20010 zip code also picks up some areas that would slightly tug its numbers down). That's true to some extent. But the impact isn't that severe. None of the L.A. zips have an autoshare less than 50% or a transit share above 35%. The bigger point is that in an area more than twice the size of its DC counterpart, there are still substantially fewer transit, bike and walking commuters.
Do people who vote on threads here actually have any clue about what they are being asked? Or is every poll here treated like vote for ur favorite place? Koreatown certainly shouldn't be winning this by no 80%.
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