Are there suburbs that look like Hollywood, CA? (versus, downtown, subway)

[cisco kid]

its basically the same suburban junk you see everywhere else in socal, but packed closer together. william fulton coined the phrase 'dense sprawl' to describe it. and the LA area in particular. which is kinder than calling it phony urbanism, or pseudo-urbanism.

[BIMBAM]

Originally Posted by cisco kid

its basically the same suburban junk you see everywhere else in socal, but packed closer together. william fulton coined the phrase 'dense sprawl' to describe it. and the LA area in particular. which is kinder than calling it phony urbanism, or pseudo-urbanism.

It's just a unique form of an urbanism, there's nothing "fake" about it. It's just different in the way that Toulouse and Baltimore are home to different kinds of urbanism, but that doesn't make either one wrong in any way.

[cisco kid]

the first time I visited I had high expectations of the city. given hollywoods reputation for glamour and excitement I was hoping to see that reflected in the architecture and manifested in the cityscape. that's the expectation I had in the back of mind as someone who grew up watching and enjoying hollywood films. that aesthetically it would perhaps be on par with a london or a paris, or at least something worthy of a world-class city. but sadly it was not to be. to me it just looked like any other mind-numbingly average run-of-the-mill ultra-bland suburb like the very one I grew up in. if it wasn't for the giant iconic Hollywood sign in the distance and maybe the palm trees on sunset blvd I probably couldn't tell the difference between it and any other random suburb in the southland. on the bright side, I did catch a glimpse of some famous people and got one autograph.

[wburg]

All this talk about "phony urbanism" and "genuine urbanism" suggests that people think there is one absolute form of "true urbanism" and other forms are somehow false. Why should people cleave to any one particular form of "urbanism," any more than people should cleave to any one particular urban form? That's a mindset that seems more in line with stereotypical suburbia ("Obviously everyone should have a single-family home, it's the best for their kids!") Obviously, one size doesn't fit all!

[gwillyfromphilly]

Originally Posted by drunk on kool aid

In the LA forum, it's fairly common for visitors to the city to describe Hollywood (a district in LA) as suburban. As a native Angeleno who hasn't seen other parts of the country, when I hear suburban, I picture a less dense, less built up, less stores and clubs built right up to the street, less pedestrian traffic sort of place. In other words, the opposite of Hollywood. Automobile congestion there is worse than DTLA. Hollywood and the adjacent city of West Hollywood includes Hollywood Blvd, Sunset, Santa Monica, Melrose Ave. and although not a forest of skyscrapers, there are some midrise to possibly highrise buildings. Heading east, there are more of the shopping centers with large parking lots facing the street. But I see Hollywood and Highland, and have a hard time imagining "suburb." How large does a "main street" have to get before it's considered urban?

Does the presence of SFRs with front and back yards disqualify an area from being urban? Almost nowhere in LA is there a large area of SFRs without low rise apartments mixed in - the blending of citified areas with SFRs and low rise apartments is normal. Growing up in my bubble, I didn't realize that other parts of the country, especially the east, weren't built like this.

So, is Hollywood really suburban? If so, are there similar suburbs in the U.S? Maybe something in Brooklyn, The Bronx or Queens? Something in the sunbelt?

How could Hollywood be suburban? It has a underground subway line.

[MB8abovetherim]

This is interesting. Because I notice that for a lot of people the only critera for "suburban" is a single family home with a lawn and a backyard. There are a lot of those right in the City of LA. Does that make LA suburban? HELL NO. I have a hard time understanding how closeminded some people can be. If we took the entire city of Los Angeles and just painted every single building to look like it was in the East Coast everybody would probably worship LA's vast urbanism! Of course, LA doesn't look like any east coast city so it MUST BE suburban. Get out of here.

What's the difference between 10 square miles of rowhouses in Philadelphia or New York and 10 square miles of single family homes in LA? Assuming the design and makeup of both areas are the same (in regards to each neighborhood having busy main streets with shops, businesses and other amenities...etc that run through and border the residential neighborhoods) an just for fun let's say the population densities are the same too. So, we have identical tracts of housing with identical infastructure and density but ONE of them is single family homes while the other is rowhouses. Naturally everybody and their mother will claim that the rowhouse neighborhood is more urban. But why??? It's exactly the same except for appearance! But that's the thing. The biggest issue I've seen with peoples view of "urbanism" is appearence. To a lot of people here "looking urban" actually makes a place more urban no matter how truely urban that place actually is. This is the problem with Los Angeles. It doesn't look "east coast urban". Yet just like it's eastern counterparts, the city of LA is walkable, provides transit and amenities and high density. So what's the big deal? why is it so difficult for some to realize that there are different styles of "urban"? Just like "manhattanization" isn't the only model for a city to follow, "east coast" isn't the only type of urbanism either.

Nobody would ever doubt the urbanism and vibrancy of European cities, yet they are often very different from east coast cities in appearance and design. I don't get it.

SUBURBAN is a place that is segregated into distinct areas: An area for living (the gated community with a dumb name like Willowfalls, or McKenze Estates...blah blah), The shopping center, and the office park. All of which are seperate and often only accessable with a car. There is NOTHING suburban about the city of Los Angeles. Does LA have suburbs around it? yeah, just like EVERY OTHER North American city. But I just don't understand this image of LA that everybody else seems to see.

[wburg]

Actually, streetcar suburbs weren't necessarily zoned that way, so no, the term "suburban" doesn't exclusively refer to the gated, single-use development, which is a particular type of suburb. Both the Los Angeles and theoretical East Coast rowhouse neighborhoods are different types of streetcar suburb. The eastern variant looks different for several reasons: the streetcars were slower when the earlier suburbs were built, making large lots less practical and affordable (while LA electric streetcars were faster and the land cheaper), shared walls of dark brick or stone were far more efficient for East Coast winters and made use of regional materials (while detached, ventilated homes with shade trees were far better for warm California summers, using abundant West Coast wood.) Many of these neighborhoods, on either coast, were originally detached suburban tracts outside the city limit, but were later annexed to become part of the city. This effect is far more pronounced in western cities--eastern cities often bumped into other cities or the suburbs had already incorporated, while in the west, cities that were very small exploded enormously--like San Jose or Phoenix, who went rapidly from dinky farm communities into the biggest cities in the country in a few decades after World War II.

[nei]

Originally Posted by gwillyfromphilly

How could Hollywood be suburban? It has a underground subway line.

Are there any not very urban places that have an underground subway line?

[BajanYankee]

Originally Posted by wburg

All this talk about "phony urbanism" and "genuine urbanism" suggests that people think there is one absolute form of "true urbanism" and other forms are somehow false. Why should people cleave to any one particular form of "urbanism," any more than people should cleave to any one particular urban form? That's a mindset that seems more in line with stereotypical suburbia ("Obviously everyone should have a single-family home, it's the best for their kids!") Obviously, one size doesn't fit all!

Someone should start a thread on the different forms of "urbanism." I don't think that there are really various forms of an urban environment. While there may be architectural and other aesthetic differences, the common thread seems to be that all urban environments use land intensively and efficiently, in contrast to suburban environments, which tend to be more "wasteful" of land.

Originally Posted by MB8abovetherim

This is interesting. Because I notice that for a lot of people the only critera for "suburban" is a single family home with a lawn and a backyard. There are a lot of those right in the City of LA. Does that make LA suburban? HELL NO. I have a hard time understanding how closeminded some people can be. If we took the entire city of Los Angeles and just painted every single building to look like it was in the East Coast everybody would probably worship LA's vast urbanism! Of course, LA doesn't look like any east coast city so it MUST BE suburban. Get out of here.

I don't think that's the case at all. I think people view L.A. as being less urban because the urban fabric is disrupted by so much parking (and other accomodations of the car). As Donald Shoup says here.

The need to house humans might push toward and increasingly dense center, but the zoning requirement to house cars pushes back, sending development outward. With off-street parking requirements, higher density simply brings more cars and more congestion, as well as increased disruptions in the urban fabric, with money directed away from buildings and towards parking lots.

http://shoup.bol.ucla.edu/People,Parking,Cities.pdf

He also states this:

L.A. has the highest density of parking spaces in the world. “You can’t have the number of cars we have in L.A. without our parking lots,” says Shoup. “And you can never create urban density with the parking lots we’ve built.”

http://www.lamag.com/features/Story.aspx?ID=1568281

Or as Eric Eidlin, another UC urban and transportation planner, stated:

The LA region's combination of high, evenly distributed density puts it in an unfortunate position: it suffers from many of the problems that accompany high population density, including extreme traffic congestion and poor air quality; but lacks many of the benefits that typically accompany more traditional versions of dense urban areas, including fast and effective public transit and a core with vibrant street life. Los Angeles has, to borrow a term coined by urbanist William Fulton, "dense sprawl." (Or, to be less charitable, it has "dysfunctional density.") It is too dense to function like classic suburbia, but also has few areas dense enough to be a "city" in the manner of central city New York or San Francisco.

http://www.uctc.net/access/37/access37_sprawl.shtml

Perhaps the most important thing he says in the article is the following:

It is also important to realize that no measure of density, no matter how comprehensive, can capture every dimension of sprawl. Much of what we consider sprawl is determined less by the density of people or jobs, and more by how buildings and parking are arranged on the street, and whether streets are designed in a way that makes walking and biking safe and comfortable.

[uptown_urbanist]

Originally Posted by cisco kid

the first time I visited I had high expectations of the city. given hollywoods reputation for glamour and excitement I was hoping to see that reflected in the architecture and manifested in the cityscape. that's the expectation I had in the back of mind as someone who grew up watching and enjoying hollywood films. that aesthetically it would perhaps be on par with a london or a paris, or at least something worthy of a world-class city. but sadly it was not to be. to me it just looked like any other mind-numbingly average run-of-the-mill ultra-bland suburb like the very one I grew up in. if it wasn't for the giant iconic Hollywood sign in the distance and maybe the palm trees on sunset blvd I probably couldn't tell the difference between it and any other random suburb in the southland. on the bright side, I did catch a glimpse of some famous people and got one autograph.

Are you sure you were in Hollywood? Yes, it can be dirty and grubby, but you can't seriously suggest that Hollywood lacks distinctive architecture. (That's part of what drew us there.) The Egyptian Theater? The old Frederick's of Hollywood building? Capitol Records building? Just because you can see the Hollywood sign does not mean you are in Hollywood.