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I wouldn't call it suburban at all, well may be the valley.
Anyway LA is clearly urban, and not like Chicago either unless your taking about Chicago single family homes. Architecturally LA is very modern and post modern, and the street are wide. The city is car concentric because the time it was develop. But LA is extremely dense and has high vibrancy.
I'm not saying it IS suburban but even in its urban core/denser areas it has some characteristics of suburbia like strip malls and corner gas stations.
I wasn't talking about architecture at all, more so it's built environment. A lot of what I saw in Chicago away from the core reminded me of LA. As in garden style detached apartments, some strip malls/parking lots, etc...
I generally try to avoid buses unless they are express buses, but a ferry is just... no. You'd have to be willing to freeze your butt off every morning and a big commute time to take the Larkspur ferry into SF every day. I always saw it as more of a weekend thing to enjoy. Vallejo ferry might be different, not sure.
Personally yes, I don't like being inside on a boat like that, makes me nauseous. Ferries still move around too much, esp if the Bay is choppy which it often is with strong winds, not like a cruise ship. Esp if I just had some dungeness crab and a couple glasses of pinot... etc.
Thanks for the clarification. I was under the impression that you were trying to say that LA was built less urban than it's southern or western counterparts during the first few decades of the 20th century--which really isn't true.
I see no huge difference between the streetcar suburbs of Denver, Portland, Atlanta or wherever.
I was never trying to deny that Atlanta or other sunbelt cities had these kinds of "old-school" (not my term, btw...) development, just that LA had more of it because it was much larger than any of these by 1930, when the paradigm started to shift away from bungalows, fourplexes, and small apartment buildings.
I don't disagree that LA's structural density in the central area increased drastically from 1950-1990, I'm just stating that LA wasn't any "sprawlier" than any other southern/western cities pre-WWII... at least in the type of buildings that were constructed and the lot sizes. LA did "sprawl" more in the sense that the red cars facilitated a dispersed "constellation" kind of development across the basin, in a somewhat similar form to the small towns of the Boston metro area.
And as munch said, great pics!
I was saying LA being more urban than Atlanta in the first few decades of the last century at most it's debatable, and I never said Atlanta was head over hills more though. Also Atlanta street car system was larger then LA and way larger than Denver but that's a different story. LA and was about equal to Dallas and Houston also. But this isn't my point.
LA wasn't even in top 50 largest cities in 1890, you got understand SF was the 8th. So there's no comparing LA to SF in type of urbanity it's apples and oranges. LA was built largely with the car in mind the streets are abnormally wide LA doesn't not represent older style of urbanity much. Just because LA was much larger and even denser by the 30s doesn't means it was more school old urban than Atlanta, Houston or Dallas. 1900 - 1930 was the beginning the modern movement, LA was the pioneer. LA largely started the new school urbanity look when cities were still was doing the old school. I not using New school urbanity as meaning after the 50s. I talking about architecture, street width, and land use.
The LA pic is more urban then the Atlanta pic but the Atlanta pic was still has more old school urbanity to it. As LA ballon pass Atlanta, Houston, Dallas this what what it did. LA didn't turn into SF or Chicago
I was saying LA being more urban than Atlanta in the first few decades of the last century at most it's debatable, and I never said Atlanta was head over hills more though. Also Atlanta street car system was larger then LA and way larger than Denver but that's a different story. LA and was about equal to Dallas and Houston also. But this isn't my point.
LA wasn't even in top 50 largest cities in 1890, you got understand SF was the 8th. So there's no comparing LA to SF in type of urbanity it's apples and oranges. LA was built largely with the car in mind the streets are abnormally wide LA doesn't not represent older style of urbanity much. Just because LA was much larger and even denser by the 30s doesn't means it was more school old urban than Atlanta, Houston or Dallas. 1900 - 1930 was the beginning the modern movement, LA was the pioneer. LA largely started the new school urbanity look when cities were still was doing the old school. I not using New school urbanity as meaning after the 50s. I talking about architecture, street width, and land use.
The LA pic is more urban then the Atlanta pic but the Atlanta pic was still has more old school urbanity to it. As LA ballon pass Atlanta, Houston, Dallas this what what it did. LA didn't turn into SF or Chicago
1. Both have large Hispanic populations
2. Both are massive in size and layout (freeway cities)
3. Both are major port cities with nearby beaches
4. Both are the largest cities in their respective state
5. Both have relatively affluent Bel Air (LA) Bellaire (TX) in their Metro
6. Both have the City of Pasadena in Metro with similar pops (140K-CA) (150K-TX)
7. Both have Orange Counties (In LA Metro) (Just outside of Hou Metro)
8. Both were once part of Mexico
I was saying LA being more urban than Atlanta in the first few decades of the last century at most it's debatable, and I never said Atlanta was head over hills more though. Also Atlanta street car system was larger then LA and way larger than Denver but that's a different story. LA and was about equal to Dallas and Houston also. But this isn't my point.
First off: I don't want to come off as combative. I'm glad that you are so interested in this kind of stuff and I have no reason to prove you wrong--I just want to make sure we get the facts straight (and if I'm incorrect about something, I'd like to learn the truth). In that spirit, I think there are some clarifications to be made and discussions to be had.
What is your source for the historic streetcar system lengths? I assume you're referring to core streetcars, not interurbans, correct? In 1940 (a later date than I'd hoped to find data for), the LARy (LA's streetcar system) had close to 225 route miles. (source: Los Angeles Railway in Brief). I'd be interested to know what these other cities had.
That said, I'm not sure that streetcar system length has much correlation to any level of "urbanity" since they weren't exactly apples to apples systems (it appears that Atlanta's system served more of a dual role streetcar/interurban but that's not my expertise), and a long system could also indicate a more dispersed suburbanized population (hence the need for a longer system). I'm interested to hear more about your sources, especially if you have any ridership or rolling stock statistics (for example LARy had 1,250 trolleys in operation), as well as your thoughts on how streetcar systems correlate to urban form.
Quote:
Originally Posted by chiatldal
LA wasn't even in top 50 largest cities in 1890, you got understand SF was the 8th. So there's no comparing LA to SF in type of urbanity it's apples and oranges. LA was built largely with the car in mind the streets are abnormally wide LA doesn't not represent older style of urbanity much. Just because LA was much larger and even denser by the 30s doesn't means it was more school old urban than Atlanta, Houston or Dallas. 1900 - 1930 was the beginning the modern movement, LA was the pioneer. LA largely started the new school urbanity look when cities were still was doing the old school. I not using New school urbanity as meaning after the 50s. I talking about architecture, street width, and land use.
The LA pic is more urban then the Atlanta pic but the Atlanta pic was still has more old school urbanity to it. As LA ballon pass Atlanta, Houston, Dallas this what what it did. LA didn't turn into SF or Chicago
I would definitely agree that San Francisco is a much more "old school" urban kind of place than Los Angeles--but I also think of it as a place that's much more "old school" than Atlanta. Atlanta and Los Angeles are of more similar vintage than either is to San Francisco. San Francisco, as you point out, was already one of the US's premier cities by the late victorian era, whereas Atlanta and LA were only large towns.
Thanks for posting the link to Cabbagetown--I wasn't familiar with that neighborhood. Are there any other neighborhoods like that in Atlanta? I get your point but this neighborhood appears to be an outlier. I've scoured Atlanta on google maps and streetview and the vast majority of Atlanta's neighborhoods appear to be from the early 1900s on, with the oldest neighborhoods comprised primarily of bungalow-style single family homes from the 00's, teens, and early 20s. Aside from the large tree cover, these neighborhoods are almost identical to ones you'd find in Seattle, Denver, Portland, or Los Angeles in the "bungalow belts" just outside the urban core.
I agree that LA's neighborhoods have wider streets than many other cities' neighborhoods from the same era (though Detroit is almost the same and often wider), though the architecture and general neighborhood composition is still solidly in keeping with the early 20th century suburban paradigm. Not until LA started widening its commercial boulevards in the mid 1920s did LA really start to break away substantially from other cities of the era. (Here's a great rundown on that history: The Great 1920s Battle That Created Olympic Boulevard - Take Olympic - Curbed LA)
I think that we can clarify things by splitting things up a little more. We've been talking "new school" and "old school" but there are many different schools. The oldest American school would be found in tight colonial old towns like Boston's north end. The next would be the jeffersonian grid (Manhattan). The next would be the burnham style cities (DC and Chicago and sortof SF) of the beaux arts mid to late 1800s. Next would be the "garden cities" of the early 20th century (Denver, Los Angeles, Portland, etc). Then would be the midcentury large-grid modern cities (phoenix), and finally late 20th century cul-de-sac cities like Orlando and Houston.
This is an oversimplification and of course each of these places has elements of all eras. But many of these places "belong" to a certain era in terms of the place in the city's history when that city came into its own.
Many argue that Los Angeles didn't really come into its own until the midcentury (once central los angeles had already been developed for decades), and I can understand this since Los Angeles boomed even larger in this period than it did in the teens and 20s. This was also when the City installed the freeways and much of its most iconic landmarks. So I think LA sortof straddles two eras (along with a couple of the other garden cities I listed).
Atlanta? I'm not sure where it fits since it really didn't truly "come into it's own" as the Atlanta we know today until very recently. It had a minor boom during the garden-movement era, but that was nothing compared to the boomtown it was in late 90s and early-mid-2000s. I'm interested to hear your thoughts on this and what type of "school" you think defines the Atlanta experience.
Quote:
Originally Posted by chiatldal
Same pics, LA is clearly urban but it's new school. Which is why I hate when people call LA suburban because long island do not look like this.
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