Most urban cities (metro, suburbs, downtown, Dallas)
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I just dont see Seattle above DC. Nei's charts show this pretty drmatically in that Seattle is significantly behind in terms of density, Seattle has a pretty dense core then drops very dramatically whereas DC does not
Seattle's downtown is more vibrant than DC's. Seattle's Pike Place market is more vibrant than a comparable street in DC. Seattle's downtown also stays more vibrant after 5 than does downtown DC.
So? To be fair DC does have an airforce base, a navy yard, and an army base inside of it's city limits as well as an abundance of Federal land and park space (more than any city except NYC). Now I do agree that LA is urban but it is a different type of urban. It's Dallas urban and not Philly urban. There is a big difference in the make up of LA versus east coast cities. From the air it looks immense but on the street level as Bajan has shown you, it looks like suburbia. How can you even compare it? In DTLA there are telephone poles, strip malls, humongous surface parking lots. WTF? Show me a telephone pole in DT DC, CC, Midtown, the Loop and DT Boston.
by weighted density (which removes all non-residential land from the equation) DC is at 17,000 ppsm. Thats the density the typical DC resident lives in, and it's comparable to Long Beach, CA, a satellite city 20+ miles from DTLA. Now I know why MDAllstar is so obsessed with street walls. They're perfect for masking how low in density DC actually is.
Btw, San Francisco has a weighted density over 30,000 ppsm. If you reduced Philly, Chicago, and L.A. to 60 sq miles, they'd be in the 30,000 range too, most likely.
You know what's pretty telling? You clinging to that 8,000 ppsm statistic for dear life. It's like a nostalgic reminder of what you all thought L.A. was, before actual facts.
DC is small compared to L.A.
Really? LOL
Fact -DC is 10,000 ppsm.
Fact - LA is 8,000 ppsm
You can cherry pick all day long but here is the end result.
You can cherry pick all day long but here is the end result.
Both cities have uninhabited areas; LA has more of them. Instead of cherry picking, you should use weighted density or calculate number / % of people in living above X density or number of people in X area.
by weighted density (which removes all non-residential land from the equation) DC is at 17,000 ppsm. Thats the density the typical DC resident lives in, and it's comparable to Long Beach, CA, a satellite city 20+ miles from DTLA. Now I know why MDAllstar is so obsessed with street walls. They're perfect for masking how low in density DC actually is.
Btw, San Francisco has a weighted density over 30,000 ppsm. If you reduced Philly, Chicago, and L.A. to 60 sq miles, they'd be in the 30,000 range too, most likely.
By weighted density, subtracting the shear street level daytime population versus the non resident population and the divided by the mean...... It all adds up to DC is 10,000 ppsm and LA is 8,000 ppsm.
For the most part we're seeing eye to eye here Doug, erm cucumber.
My point was that the infill in the 80's was easily the most in modern US record. By just raw numbers it has the considerable edge to the 60's, 70's, 90's, 00's. Yes there was infill in the 60's and 70's and 90's and 00's but the 80's take the raw number contest just because of the sheer growth. More folks, more units, and more infill.
I assumed everyone already knew this--it was more of the same and a continuation of the 60s and 70s as an acceleration of the same factors. The 80s were a further acceleration, and while it did build the groundwork for the 90s, that isn't a very illuminating statement since the 70s laid the groundwork for the 80s, the 60s for the 70s, and so on. Your article itself, which I took quotes from, stated the same repeatedly in different ways.
The 90s, are to me, where the change actually happened. Manufacturing steadily left and people kept coming in, so that was a continuation of things and more people came in. The aerospace industry though, did a pretty abrupt wind-down from the end of the Cold War, mass transit was actually put on line and operational, demographic changes hit a tipping point with a huge Asian influx larger before and a shift for both the city and county into "minority-majority." Then came the '92 riots, a very real tipping point, which eviscerated the city and set even greater immigration to Orange County and SGV while also laying the groundwork for a rebuilding of much of LA in a different way (modern Ktown as we know it) and presented a huge cheap, burnt-out, but centrally located swath of land in LA for incredible amounts of foreign investment, especially from East Asia. LA elected council members of minority descent (now a majority of the council as well as a latino mayor). The 90s were the turning point in my opinion, and the 00s was mostly a continuation of a new pattern with zoning changes and an even stronger reliance on immigrant communities.
Of course, this topic is about urbanity and a specific sort that's about vibrant streetlife and walkable communities, and I am of the personal opinion that LA only entered the second tier being discussed in the last couple years.
Quote:
Originally Posted by scrantiX
Yes they did pass Europe off as a country. Go and check the posts by LindavG and her posse, who to retaliate to my rather assertive position that the US is the #1 overall country started talking about how you can get from Moscow to Madrid faster than LA to NYC. I really don't care for the semantics in that argument but it would have been a more polite conversation had they refrained from trying to pass Europe off as a "nation" rival to the US.
California is the #1 state in the US, just as the US is the #1 country in the world. You can argue Europe as the #1 continent but I wont be going into any threads about that, I don't care enough. Obviously these places aren't #1 in everything but they are the most rounded #1 choices in their respective designations. Why they argued that, I wont ever know. My guess is envy and insecurities but you wont ever agree to that.
All of these places in downtown are better now than they were in 2001, 1992, or 1983 so for modern LA she doesn't have the grounds to call it desolate. Her problem that she moved from Buenos Aires into a SFH neighborhood and expected vibrancy to begin with. I don't entertain her lack of insight on LA.
No, you made it out to sound as if they/she were idiots and didn't know that Europe was not a country. It was obvious to me that you made a ridiculous argument and they just used Europe as a shorthand for several European countries.
Quote:
Originally Posted by 18Montclair
Los Angeles is more urban than anywhere in the United States except New York. DC is small and country by comparison.
I agree that LA wins in some definitions of urban, but there's a specific one that we've been discussing, so this isn't very helpful. You seem to be good at finding data--try finding stuff that directly addresses the argument at hand.
Quote:
Originally Posted by 18Montclair
I love rural 'Southern' lingo.
Fitting from you, being from Maryland.
It's a big city thing, you wouldnt understand.
No, I think its quite realistic to call DC country compared to the likes of not only LA, but also SF, Philadelphia and Boston.
Just look at all of those population density numbers. I now understand why they try to manipulate every thread into debates about office space, transit ridership and now the bizarre fixation on how many crowded buildings there are....LOL
No, DC is cute enough but a casual look at the stats coupled with an actual visit to DC is all one needs to realize that DC is a distant 7th-although Im inclined to now think that MIAMI is probably better qualified to occupy 7th place.
DC is down on some metrics, up on others. It's been pretty good about poaching a hell of a lot of company headquarters including two Fortune 500 ones from LA in recent years. I'd hesitate about looking down on DC. Also the whole southern thing you're projecting is insulting for no particular reason. It's not like they're a bunch of inbred islanders or something.
Both cities have uninhabited areas; LA has more of them. Instead of cherry picking, you should use weighted density or calculate number / % of people in living above X density or number of people in X area.
I don't need to do any cherry picking. DC is 10,000 ppsm and LA is at 8,000 ppsm. All cities have uninhabited areas. I just mentioned that DC is 19% parkland. DC also has an airforce base, a navy yard, and an army installation. All cramed in 61 square miles.
I just dont see Seattle above DC. Nei's charts show this pretty drmatically in that Seattle is significantly behind in terms of density, Seattle has a pretty dense small core then drops very dramatically whereas DC does not
I'd place Seattle ahead of most of other cities, even if its weak on density. Still behind DC and LA, though, but ahead of Miami/Houston/Dallas. Its downtown is strong and didn't feel patchy. Didn't you mentioned earlier Seattle was overrated and you'd place it below Phoneix? I was pleasantly suprised by Seattle. Felt a bit negative about it at the beginning of my visit; some parts of downtown still felt relatively dead and a lot of the skyscrapers had nothing at street level (Portland had more at street level). The way everyone waitied for a pedestrian signal bugged me… the locals don't know how to cross a city street! But after I got used to it, I realized it still worked quite well, even if it was more car-friendly than I used to.
You know what's pretty telling? You clinging to that 8,000 ppsm statistic for dear life. It's like a nostalgic bittersweet reminder of what you all thought L.A. was, before all these pesky facts ruined the party.
You are starting to let the DC bashing get the best of you - you are saying some really stupid stuff upthread.
Show me your neighborhood then. Let's see how urban it is. Show me a street view of the neighborhood you live in.
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