Welcome to City-Data.com Forum!
U.S. CitiesCity-Data Forum Index
Go Back   City-Data Forum > General Forums > Urban Planning
 [Register]
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.
View detailed profile (Advanced) or search
site with Google Custom Search

Search Forums  (Advanced)
Reply Start New Thread
 
Old 12-05-2008, 11:47 PM
 
Location: Northern Colorado
4,932 posts, read 12,706,251 times
Reputation: 1363

Advertisements

Okay, im a bit confused on this one certain issue....

I am planning to go to college at CSU Northridge. I'm thinking since I'm going to be in the city of Los Angeles I am going to be in a urban city.
Is that right?

But some people say i want be in an urban city because they say I'm going to be in a suburban neighborhood located in LA called Northridge.
But I told them that I have lived in an ex-urban and rural community before and I wasn't particularly living in a rural or ex-urban neighborhood. In the rural and ex-urban neighborhood I lived in suburban cul-de-sac neighborhoods.

So can some one try to explain this factor to me....living in an urban city but your not really in an urban city? does this make sense? its like an oxymoron
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message

 
Old 12-06-2008, 12:12 AM
 
Location: Twin Cities, Minnesota
3,940 posts, read 14,665,755 times
Reputation: 2287
I have a friend that goes to CSUN. She says Northridge is "considered" part of LA but it's actually very suburban-esque and it has cul-de-sacs and lots of homes. Just consider it a suburb that has been annexed by LA, yet hasn't lost any of its charm.
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
 
Old 12-06-2008, 12:20 AM
 
Location: Northern Colorado
4,932 posts, read 12,706,251 times
Reputation: 1363
So would it be considered an inner suburb perhaps? I mean i know inner suburbs are very populated and very dense cities within 15 minutes of urban cities and outer suburbs can be far out as an hour and have less and lower population densities than the inner suburbs.

northridge isnt it's community though. it's a suburban neighborhood in LA. im in the urban city of LA, so can i be considered to be living in a urban city? even if i live in that part of the city will i still get urban life or not? your saying i should consider northridge a inner suburb?
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
 
Old 12-06-2008, 01:03 AM
 
3,368 posts, read 11,631,614 times
Reputation: 1701
Northridge is part of the City of Los Angeles, as are a multitude of other suburban areas in the Valley. However, just because it's within city limits doesn't mean that it's "urban." Northridge is very suburban in character; little is "urban" about it. I would say that most of the City of Los Angeles is quite suburban in character.

Take a Google Street View tour of Northridge and you won't see lots of pedestrians, sidewalk cafes, and people window shopping; you will see six-lane streets with high-speed traffic, single family homes with lawns, and strip malls.
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
 
Old 12-06-2008, 01:07 AM
 
Location: Jersey City
7,053 posts, read 19,205,355 times
Reputation: 6906
IMO, Suburban/Urban/Rural are all about environment, and they're all pretty subjective. Where the city boundaries are drawn doesn't determine where the transition between those environments occur. Whatever your surroundings look and feel like will tell you. Most cities, even large cities like LA, NY, etc., have areas on their outer fringes which look more like suburbs than inner city neighborhoods. Those fringes are suburban in character, though most other parts of the city may look and feel very urban.

Let's look at an extreme example. Oklahoma City. The place is geographically enormous. It has an urban center (sorta) downtown. There are neighborhoods that are more suburban in character outside of that. Then there are exurban areas beyond that. There are even flat-out rural areas within the limits of Oklahoma City. If you live on a 10-acre farm in Oklahoma City, are you in an urban setting?

Coming back to Northridge, it's a suburban part of the city of LA. LA is mostly urban, but not every part of it is.
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
 
Old 12-06-2008, 02:32 AM
 
668 posts, read 2,349,206 times
Reputation: 235
move to south florida... u will have no idea if ur in a city, suburb, ghetto or Carribean nation.
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
 
Old 08-09-2010, 09:03 PM
 
6,333 posts, read 11,489,882 times
Reputation: 6304
Here's a blog that celebrates the small towns, wilderness and even a farm within New york City-

you'd never believe (http://www.forgotten-ny.com/YOU'D%20NEVER%20BELIEVE/You'd%20Never%20Believe%20homepage/believe.html - broken link)
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
 
Old 08-09-2010, 10:29 PM
 
10,629 posts, read 26,625,056 times
Reputation: 6776
LA is probably a more confusing example than many areas, as its layout doesn't follow the more traditional model of dense center city ringed by neighborhoods and then suburbs of decreasing density. It's also so huge and has mountains going through it, as well as other physical barriers that complicate things even more. In any case, in LA it doesn't do much good to talk about traditional "inner suburbs." Some parts of the official city limits are pretty suburban (although generally higher density than most suburbs in other parts of the country), and some "suburbs" are very urban. While in every city you can't just look at city limits and make assumptions, I think that is even more true in LA than it is in many places.

I'm not a native to LA, but here's my impression based on living there: if you live in Northridge you'll probably tell other people you meet in California that you live in Northridge. If you're talking to people who don't live in California or aren't familiar with the LA area you'll probably just say you live in LA.

The confusing nature might be heightened in LA due to its development pattern and city boundaries, but like others have pointed out, this is true anywhere. Just think about NYC, for example. You could live in a suburban area on Staten Island (as one example), and yet be within New York City limits.
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
 
Old 08-09-2010, 11:54 PM
 
8,679 posts, read 17,189,509 times
Reputation: 4680
"The City" always takes the cake when it comes to facepalm-inducing posts, but in this case I think he's not alone. Some folks seem to assume that any "city" means dense populations on small lots, and "suburbs" and "country" are somehow identical, with sparse populations and large lots. But, as we see, even cities that are generally large and dense have low-density neighborhoods.

And, on the flip side, many traditional small towns, well into what most would consider the country, have "high-density" areas, with houses on small lots near the town square, small apartments above retail stores or stand-alone apartment buildings, and lots of what some seem to associate only with cities...but in small towns of 10,000 or less.
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
 
Old 08-12-2010, 01:07 PM
 
Location: Niceville, FL
13,256 posts, read 22,657,287 times
Reputation: 16398
Also sometimes topography and geography can make dense urban development impractical. I grew up in a city with about 4400 people per square mile (denser than places like Dallas or Houston) and my neighborhood had a lot of hills and ravines that made it impossible to lay streets out in a 'traditional' city grid. So the lots were bigger and a couple neighbors that had homesteads right on the creek (and its resulting unbuildable floodplain once you got down the slope) had so much room that a few even kept 'backyard' horses.
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
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.


Reply
Please update this thread with any new information or opinions. This open thread is still read by thousands of people, so we encourage all additional points of view.

Quick Reply
Message:


Over $104,000 in prizes was already given out to active posters on our forum and additional giveaways are planned!

Go Back   City-Data Forum > General Forums > Urban Planning

All times are GMT -6.

© 2005-2024, Advameg, Inc. · Please obey Forum Rules · Terms of Use and Privacy Policy · Bug Bounty

City-Data.com - Contact Us - Archive 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37 - Top