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For anyone reading this who is understanding the references to a Century City (!??!) movie theater to be downtown LA, that's sort of like if someone thinks King of Prussia is Center City Philadelphia. Or Manhattan, Kansas, to be in New York. In other words, don't make the mistake of getting the two mixed up. And that makes, essentially, ALL of cisco kid's observations faulty, at least as they refer to do downtown LA. He has clearly never been to downtown LA.
Century City is NOT downtown. It's not even close. Some tall buildings and "city" in the name do not a downtown make.
Obvious? I didn't expect a downtown movie theater to offer parking validated parking for free. The rates at this mall / skyscraper complex in Boston is $12 after validation up to 4 hours or evenings:
The only time I went to this theater I just took the subway. There are much better movie theaters much closer to me so I'll probably never go back (the only reason I went was I had some free passes).
Again to follow up on Bajan's google streetview trek, here's a map of the urban "yellow" streetcar lines (not the interurban red cars) in 1938, basically defining what the "city" was at that time. The colors relate to population density.
As you can see, you trekked down the "P" line toward Crenshaw, which would have been at the "end of the line" at the time--effectively the "suburbs" of the day. You turned left and headed west on Wilshire toward Miracle Mile, which was a completely auto-oriented suburban shopping district of the time.
If you're looking for the more pedestrian-oriented areas of LA from an urban design standpoint--or at least the areas that have the greatest potential due to street/block layout, parcel size, etc.--it would make sense to stick to the core areas that were served by the urban streetcar system. As you can see, there's a contiguous urban core area west of the river that would be the area of LA that would best fit your description of a "360" urban layout.
Anything on the red car system will be the isolated suburban town center kind of stuff that has been discussed as more representative of the rest of the basin.
Again to follow up on Bajan's google streetview trek, here's a map of the urban "yellow" streetcar lines (not the interurban red cars) in 1938, basically defining what the "city" was at that time. The colors relate to population density.
As you can see, you trekked down the "P" line toward Crenshaw, which would have been at the "end of the line" at the time--effectively the "suburbs" of the day. You turned left and headed west on Wilshire toward Miracle Mile, which was a completely auto-oriented suburban shopping district of the time.
If you're looking for the more pedestrian-oriented areas of LA from an urban design standpoint--or at least the areas that have the greatest potential due to street/block layout, parcel size, etc.--it would make sense to stick to the core areas that were served by the urban streetcar system. As you can see, there's a contiguous urban core area west of the river that would be the area of LA that would best fit your description of a "360" urban layout.
Anything on the red car system will be the isolated suburban town center kind of stuff that has been discussed as more representative of the rest of the basin.
Was this a core area served by the streetcar system?
Yes. If you turn the camera around you'll see a block that hasn't been extensively redeveloped and it'll make more sense.
That area of town is called City West and was demolished extensively during the latter part of the last century--for new redevelopment that never really materialized.
S. Westlake and 6th Street. A little more compact than other areas, but it still strikes me as some place where I'd drive if I had a car. Moreover, it strikes me as a place where I would definitely want to own a car.
Whittier and Soto Street. This is way too spaced out for every day errands on foot. Unless I couldn't afford a car, that is, which is probably the case for many of the people you see on the streets. Los Angeles, CA - Google Maps
All of those areas were pedestrian oriented at one time, but have been blighted by auto uses (and just general blight...). They can be redeveloped to be more pedestrian-oriented again relatively easily--it'll just take filling in the gaps. Also, a lot of those areas you posted I do find pedestrian friendly out on the street--I've spent a lot of time walking around most of those. Sure, it's no lower manhattan, but it's got a lot of potential. I tend to think of these areas as being unwalkable because of a proliferation of "poor uses" not because of anything inherent in the "DNA" of the urban fabric of these commercial areas. For example, parts of City West are starting to be redeveloped, and if you get enough of this kind of thing you'll start to get some synergy: westlake los angeles - Google Maps
The other areas that you visited earlier, like la cienega and wilshire east of hancock park, basically don't have any hope to become compact "360" environments because they have too many large postwar parcels and huge block sizes. Also, the distance between commercial streets is way too large.
And for the record, I was never one to say that Los Angeles on the whole is as pedestrian-friendly as other cities that have the same density of people and amenities. There is definitely a strong auto-orientation bias that does make it far less pleasing to walk in Los Angeles. That said, in the historic area of the yellow cars, we have the opportunity to build a very walkable urban core by doing some relatively small-scale redevelopment (in the grand scheme of city building) on the commercial corridors.
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