Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
I am shocked people are ranking New ?Orleans metro over Houston's, Has anyone actually been there????
New Orleans outside of a small area were 100,000-150,000 people or less people live is literally empty and dead to the point that the french quarter can't even compensate for the entire metro. 3-5 miles in any direction from the FQ and your basically left with either ghetto hood, water or boring suburbia. Among small cities NO is good even high class but the metro barely grazes a million and your trying to compare it to humongous metros. I am not lying when I say LaCenterra which is the "urban node/ not car centric, (we have a couple car centric areas also, were traffic is crazy) if placed in a suburb of the NO metro would be top 3 or 4 most urban neighborhoods outside of New Orleans itself." The Katy Freeway on a Saturday night has more people than the entire metro outside of NO. Fort Bend County outclasses the Metro outside of NO and 2 inner suburbs (Metaire, Kenner (even then this is a maybe)).
Location: East Central Pennsylvania/ Chicago for 6yrs.
2,535 posts, read 3,282,673 times
Reputation: 1483
Quote:
Originally Posted by NigerianNightmare
I am shocked people are ranking New ?Orleans metro over Houston's, Has anyone actually been there????
New Orleans outside of a small area were 100,000-150,000 people or less people live is literally empty and dead to the point that the french quarter can't even compensate for the entire metro. 3-5 miles in any direction from the FQ and your basically left with either ghetto hood, water or boring suburbia. Among small cities NO is good even high class but the metro barely grazes a million and your trying to compare it to humongous metros. I am not lying when I say LaCenterra which is the "urban node/ not car centric, (we have a couple car centric areas also, were traffic is crazy) if placed in a suburb of the NO metro would be top 3 or 4 most urban neighborhoods outside of New Orleans itself." The Katy Freeway on a Saturday night has more people than the entire metro outside of NO. Fort Bend County outclasses the Metro outside of NO and 2 inner suburbs (Metaire, Kenner (even then this is a maybe)).
Still to compare Downtown Houston to Downtown New Orleans, French Quarter..... is OPPOSITES. One quite dead one tourist haven.
That's a big part. Your Downtown core still falls WAY SHORT for what the thread topic ask. Vibrancy/Urban Energy and the Metro can't pull it up enough. A Vibrant core is still key to most placements. New Skyscrapers alone are not yet increasing vibrancy. Nice shiny glass and angles to look at. But not enough outside. To work the parking garage or tram/bus and home and those awful huge plain garages even on main streets .... a very few have some retail.
You asked.... its downtown Houston that lowers the level on most list.
I said outside of those tod nodes it's not really active. And those nodes aren't what this forum tries to make them either.
Normally I don't bother responding with foolish boosters but I'll address this matter just this once. TODS (and there are a lot of them) are abundant throughout much of the DC MSA and are deeply embedded in the development culture here whether you like it or not. You might as well as say that the Bay Area is "sleepy" in vibrancy and energy compared to Metro LA. This isn't some small town backwater, you're addressing a growing metro region of 6 million people. Not saying that the DMV or the Bay are more vibrant overall than Metro LA but "sleep" is not the word I would used. I've been to LA before (two years ago in early October actually) and the vibrancy of some of the neighborhoods I've been to didn't felt too different from DC's for the most part except for Santa Monica, Hollywood (felt even more crowded than Chinatown/Gallery Place, one of DC's most bustling and densest neighborhoods), and maybe Venice to some extent. Other LA neighborhoods I've been to were Westchester, Inglewood, Beverly Hills, Bel-Air, the Wilshire Corridor, West Hollywood, and the Fairfax District. And yes, I know there's much more to LA than the Central and Westside parts of the city (been on the South part too of course), the same way there's much more to DC than just The Mall, Georgetown, and Downtown. I'm certainly not selling LA short by saying it was "sleepy" for the sake of being a booster drone
I've worked in a few of those tods. This forum, for some reason, acts as if highrises alone make a place interesting or vibrant.
That just isn't true at all.
I think compared to metro la, when you factor in ethnic enclaves, Orange County and it's tourism...
DC Metro is sleeper as a whole.
It's probably busier than most metros..
But I've taken around visitors from DC to la and they can't believe how massive and busy it is. They're overwhelmed.
metro yes
also the tough part to compare overall is touristy places though does factor
The issue is what is the marker, is it sustained suburbanish intensity 9then LA trumps all including NYC and where Miami would do very well too.
If urban non toursity/living areas LA is not among the top 6 though not bad there either
If I was looking at a Philly lens I focus on the most urban portions, if for LA someone probably looks with a different lens.
LA I funny a lot of places remind me of what I consider the jersey shore vibrancy to be albeit more seasonal here. Very active though but doesn't feel like a city for the most part (yes LB, DT, Santa Monica, Hollywood can have parts of that and be ok in that sense) the vibrancy you discuss is more very high suburban on the wider scale (don't get caught up in my suburban moniker) and is tough to compare
LA has a wider breadth of activeness but less intense. DC has a more intense core with sporadic TOD activeness then more of quiet. NYC (or a Philly or Boston) would e more similar to DC with a very intense core then sporadic activeness (difference I non TOD and more old town centers) and a lot of leafy quiet burbs.
Only NYC to me ever had an "energy" that was palpable. The other cities all seemed big, but lacking a certain energy. Note: San fran is the only city that I have not been in. Going by numbers on that one. I lived in LA years back too, but never found the time to get up to San Francisco. What a waste. Would have liked to. Afraid I might have been disappointed though being from NY state. NYC was my first love. Plus, I like LA better than SF.
Last edited by supermanpansy; 12-18-2015 at 03:08 PM..
also the tough part to compare overall is touristy places though does factor
The issue is what is the marker, is it sustained suburbanish intensity 9then LA trumps all including NYC and where Miami would do very well too.
If urban non toursity/living areas LA is not among the top 6 though not bad there either
If I was looking at a Philly lens I focus on the most urban portions, if for LA someone probably looks with a different lens.
LA I funny a lot of places remind me of what I consider the jersey shore vibrancy to be albeit more seasonal here. Very active though but doesn't feel like a city for the most part (yes LB, DT, Santa Monica, Hollywood can have parts of that and be ok in that sense) the vibrancy you discuss is more very high suburban on the wider scale (don't get caught up in my suburban moniker) and is tough to compare
LA has a wider breadth of activeness but less intense. DC has a more intense core with sporadic TOD activeness then more of quiet. NYC (or a Philly or Boston) would e more similar to DC with a very intense core then sporadic activeness (difference I non TOD and more old town centers) and a lot of leafy quiet burbs.
I can only talk of Boston in this regard, but the city had a vibrant core with tight narrow streets and walker friendly, old school aesthetics, brick, urban squares, urban parks, the "T" etc. All things I wish the core of LA could learn and have more of, you could then reach out in to Cambridge, Everett, East Boston, Somerville, Malden, Chelsea, Dorchester, Roxbury, etc. All connected by the T creating an urban area decently large. LA on the other hand has the core which consists of large areas such as Westlake, Koreatown, Boyle Heights, East Hollywood, and Mid City, this all encompasses a large area that has decent PT, decent walkability, density, etc. However Boston still does a better job at its core undoubtedly, but we are talking cores at this point, where's Boston's Santa Monica? Revere, lol good luck, what about Hollywood? Long Beach? West Hollywood? Huntington Park? Where's the Venice? Manhattan Beach? Pasadena? All these places are well connected by transit and to the core of Los Angeles, I'm leaving out places Like Glendale, Burbank, Huntington , Anaheim, because they're really not connected like the others I mentioned, and I'm not saying metro Boston just stops and becomes leafy suburbs outside the areas I mentioned, but for the most it becomes very small town boutiquish and yes leafy suburbs, although very charming, not much vibrancy to speak of. If someone wanted an urban experience I would defer them to Boston, Philly, SF, etc. because they do it better and would give a better experience, but that doesn't mean LA's core is that of Houston's, Miami's, or Dallas, so taken all this together with the proximity of things, IMO LA as a city and metro gives off a vibrancy unmatched with only NYC surpassing it, and SF coming in third.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
