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Scott Bottles spells out the difference between L.A. and older cities in his book "Los Angeles and the Automobile: The Making of the Modern City."
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In general, those regions with a long history of urban growth tended to decentralize later than cities such as Los Angeles. New York, Boston and Philadelphia had built up over the previous two hundred years extensive urban cores, which even today continue to exert a strong influence over the transporation patterns of the surrounding areas. Other cities such as Houston, Los Angeles and Phoenix emerged after the invention of the streetcar, automobile and truck. Because these innovations encouraged residential and economic dispersal, the city centers of these later cities today appear less developed.
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Older metropolises such as Boston, Chicago, and San Francisco had by that time several layers of urban growth surrounding their downtown commercial districts which exerted strong centralizing forces on the rest of the city. Lacking such prior development, Los Angeles found itself less constricted and hence more easily adaptable to the automobile and a decentralized economy.
You're still missing it. In the the Hollywood Hills you're not outside the city--you're surrounded by it. You can go in any direction and hit dense, gridded Los Angeles. How is that anything like living in an affluent area in NJ or Connecticut?
I am not. So you live in Beverly Hills but work in DTLA. Your commute time is similar as if you live in Rye and work in Manhattan. Frankly, it could be even longer.
So the point still stands that there are no hyper dense areas of affluence right in the city center. This is in direct contrast to the Top 5 and DC.
But to another point, DTLA isn't the primary employment center for executives - that's more Westside, closer to Beverly Hills and other similar executive housing areas. This is also in contrast to the Top 5 and DC which are far more centralized.
I don't believe I'm missing anything here...
As with Hillsborough in the Peninsula south of SF where big old mansions sit on hills overlooking walkable areas with urban characteristics, it can still take 10-15 minutes just to get out of the hills and down into that more "urban" environment.
Or you can shuffle all of them around (except for NYC). They all have strengths and weaknesses relative to the others.
San Francisco
Strengths: Highly walkable, large(ish) downtown, high density
Weaknesses: Transportation system is completely underwhelming
Philadelphia
Strengths: Density, highly walkable mixed-use CBD, large city
Weaknesses: Underwhelming transit, monotonous rowhouse neighborhoods, blight
Chicago
Strengths: Density, good transit, walkable neighborhoods, very large city
Weaknesses: Not as compact as Eastern cities, more commercial segregation, less flow from CBD
Boston
Strengths: Strong transit, Lower Manhattan-like CBD, compact
Weaknesses: Small
DC
Strengths: Most transit-oriented of the lot (imo), very walkable, high employment centralization
Weaknesses: Less dense than the other cities, small
Los Angeles
Strengths: Density, very large
Weaknesses: Not as walkable as other cities, not as transit-oriented, smaller CBD employment
That's just a quick and dirty version.
This is an excellent summary of the relative differences.
Really there is no "top 5". There's NYC, which is its own beast, and then these six cities, with varying strengths and weaknesses. You could (plausibly) rank these cities in almost any order after NYC, depending on how you're weighting different things.
You're still missing it. In the the Hollywood Hills you're not outside the city--you're surrounded by it. You can go in any direction and hit dense, gridded Los Angeles. How is that anything like living in an affluent area in NJ or Connecticut?
Somewhere like Alpine, or Englewood Cliffs, NJ aren't really that different. You're right across the river from Manhattan, there are huge multiacre hilltop estates selling for crazy prices, and you're surrounded by the towers of Manhattan and the urban parts of Jersey.
If you live in Alpine/Englewood Cliffs, you could just bike into Manhattan. That would be a pretty easy bike ride right over the bridge.
And the rich parts of LA aren't really "surrounded" by the city; they're "above" the city. Everything of prime importance is south of/below the hills.
Somewhere like Alpine, or Englewood Cliffs, NJ aren't really that different. You're right across the river from Manhattan, there are huge multiacre hilltop estates selling for crazy prices, and you're surrounded by the towers of Manhattan and the urban parts of Jersey.
If you live in Alpine/Englewood Cliffs, you could just bike into Manhattan. That would be a pretty easy bike ride right over the bridge.
You're right...driving over a bridge across state lines from NJ into NY is exactly the same thing as taking a step over the boundary from mansion filled Hancock Park into the adjacent 42,000 psm neighborhood of Koreatown.
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Originally Posted by NOLA101
And the rich parts of LA aren't really "surrounded" by the city; they're "above" the city. Everything of prime importance is south of/below the hills.
What about Hancock Park? Santa Monica? Beverly Hills? Beverlywood? Manhattan Beach? All wealthy neighborhoods that are certainly not "above" the city.
I think I'm done here. Its becoming apparent you aren't familiar enough with Los Angeles to have a meaningful dialogue.
Last edited by DistrictDirt; 06-18-2015 at 03:54 PM..
No. I meant that the data tells us how people live. You can argue all day long about how walkable a certain place is, but you can't argue about transit use, walking rates, and car ownership rates. Those are as objective as it gets and there's a clear difference between some other cities and Central Los Angeles here.
Ok, but it seems you an anonelitist are using the manner in which people in Los Angeles "live" as a telltale sign of how walkable the city's neighborhoods are. "More people drive = neighborhood not walkable" seems to be what you're implying. Or, in anontolist's case, not that urban. That's a leap in logic, and that's why I specifically brought up DTLA to disprove that theory.
DTLA = 55k residents, 80-85% own automobiles. Maybe more. It doesn't change the fact that it's a highly walkable urban environment.
In contrast, the transit share in Daly City is higher. It's scarcely urban or walkable at all.
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i disagree. I lived in DC before I lived in New York. While Brooklyn is obviously much denser and more urban than DC, the difference is more degree than kind, imo. 57.1% of commutes in DC are by transit, walking or bicycle and 37.4% of households in DC don't own a car (nearly the complete inverse of LA). I'm not sure how you figure that's more similar to Los Angeles, but okay.
I was referring to the scale of the walkable neighborhoods. Brooklyn has far more, and way more people living in them. Either way, the total amount of car-free households in DC and Central LA are far closer to each other than either is to Brooklyn.
Last edited by RaymondChandlerLives; 06-18-2015 at 04:40 PM..
You're right...driving over a bridge across state lines from NJ into NY is exactly the same thing as taking a step over the boundary from mansion filled Hancock Park into the adjacent 42,000 psm neighborhood of Koreatown.
Your comparison makes no sense because 1. We are talking about the richest neighborhoods in LA and 2. We are talking about the neighborhoods "up in the hills". Hancock Park isn't among the richest LA neighborhoods, and Hancock Park isn't up in the hills.
Obviously every U.S. city, even NYC, has neighborhoods like Hancock Park, where you have older mansions close to poor urban districts. I can name many such examples in NYC alone (Riverdale, Bronx, Jamaica Estates, Queens, Prospect Park South/Ditmas Park/Midwood, Brooklyn).
But the richest LA neighborhoods are nowhere near Hancock Park, or Koreatown. The wealth is most concentrated in Beverly Hills/Holmby Hills/Bel Air and environs. The big money doesn't live anywhere around Hancock Park.
Ok, but it seems you an anonelitist are using the manner in which people in Los Angeles "live" as a telltale sign of how walkable the city's neighborhoods are. "More people drive = neighborhood not walkable" seems to be what you're implying. Or, in anontolist's case, not that urban. That's a the leap in logic, and that's why I specifically brought up DTLA to disprove that theory.
More people drive = neighborhood less walkable. That's definitely true.
No, it doesn't mean the neighborhood is unwalkable, but relative walkability is almost always correlated with relative level of car ownership.
Ok, but it seems you an anonelitist are using the manner in which people in Los Angeles "live" as a telltale sign of how walkable the city's neighborhoods are.
Nope. That's not what I said. Re-read my previous post. I said that the data tells us how people live. That is why I expressly said "putting arguments about walkability and the built environment aside."
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Originally Posted by RaymondChandlerLives
"More people drive = neighborhood not walkable" seems to be what you're implying. Or, in anontolist's case, not that urban. That's a the leap in logic, and that's why I specifically brought up DTLA to disprove that theory.
Only that's not what I was implying.
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Originally Posted by RaymondChandlerLives
I was referring to the scale of the walkable neighborhoods. Brooklyn has far more, and way more people living in them. Either way, the total amount of car-free households in DC and Central LA are far closer to each other than either is to Brooklyn.
This is a sly effort on your part to change the argument here. The question is not whether Brooklyn has more people than DC. The question is whether the lifestyle in both places are similar in terms of commuting rates, car ownership, etc. In both places, non-auto commuting is the norm and that was the point. That makes both very different from Los Angeles. The "total amount" is irrelevant.
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