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I make the case for Los Angeles. I just cannot understand the strange "LA is not urban like NYC" talk. In my opinion for all intents and purposes Los Angeles is 2nd to NYC in terms of size and urban development. It may not have the skyscrapers that Chicago has but it's certainly bigger in size and scope as a city.
I just think that there is a bias and perception people in the east have about LA that is outdated.
No one argues that LA isn't the second biggest city.
We're talking about urbanity. Obviously LA destroys all other U.S. cities except for NYC in terms of size, but LA, pound-for-pound does not have a tremendous amount of pedestrian friendly, transit-oriented urbanity. It has density, but more in terms of overcrowding rather than structural density, and not really overlapping heavily with where people want to live.
For example, Rampart is very dense, but not a very desirable place to live, and gets its density from immigrants stuffing into buildings. Places that are more desirable tend to be less dense, and not super-heavy transit or pedestrian oriented.
If you took a two mile wide area from around the southern part of the Loop up to the northwest through Addison or Iriving Park you would have at least 10 square miles of pretty hard urbanity. Around 300,000 residents, 650,000 jobs and over 100,000 college students.
NYC
Chicago
Boston
Philadelphia
Los Angeles
San Francisco
Those would all be up there. Los Angeles might be fairly sprawled, but the west side of the city is still hard core "city" and continuous. Lots of single family houses though I guess.
There are some, but their presence in Central LA/Westside is overstated. The percentage of multi-unit structures in this area (home to 1.1-1.3 million people depending on the boundaries) is in the 80% range.
In Koreatown only 7% of the housing is single-family detached. WeHo, 11%. Even West Los Angeles is only 25% single family detached.
So some of you are seriously saying there are 10 square miles that have people (and a huge mass of them) at all hours of the day walking around, day in and day out, from one built up neighborhood to the next, in almost uniform liveliness in Seattle or Baltimore?
Seriously? I've lived in the DMV area for a while now, I go to Baltimore every single time I want to get seafood, and seriously? 10 contuously built up square mileage of nothing but European style pedestrian liveliness from one area to the next? Sometimes I even wonder if Washington fits that quota.
If that's your criteria, then only NYC will be on the list. No other U.S. city will have 10 square miles of wall-to-wall people.
There are some, but their presence in Central LA/Westside is overstated. The percentage of multi-unit structures in this area (home to 1.1-1.3 million people depending on the boundaries) is in the 80% range.
In Koreatown only 7% of the housing is single-family detached. WeHo, 11%. Even West Los Angeles, often associated with suburbia and auto-sprawl, is only 25% single family detached.
This is true. It would surprise some folks but the % multifamily is higher in LA than in Chicago (just slightly higher, but still).
I make the case for Los Angeles. I just cannot understand the strange "LA is not urban like NYC" talk. In my opinion for all intents and purposes Los Angeles is 2nd to NYC in terms of size and urban development. It may not have the skyscrapers that Chicago has but it's certainly bigger in size and scope as a city.
I just think that there is a bias and perception people in the east have about LA that is outdated.
LOL. LA is not even close to NYC in urbanity. Anyone who has been to both cities would surely know this.... cut as a break hahaha
This mindset is not outdated. LA is very car-centric and sprawling, it certainly has urban nodes spread throughout the city, but then there are large swaths of parking lots and suburbanesk development in what should be an urban zone: http://goo.gl/maps/KIA6t
LA just has a lot of infilling to do. You won't find developments like this near the cores of NYC, Chi, Philly, Boston, San Fran, DC....
If that's your criteria, then only NYC will be on the list. No other U.S. city will have 10 square miles of wall-to-wall people.
That's it?
Do the other cities really drop off that badly in pedestrian activity moving beyond the 2 square mile core? Never thought it was that bad, the way people make their cities out to be here. I mean I can understand that not every street would have a heavy amount of traffic, that may be asking for too much, but over a minimum area of 10 square miles, there isn't an even spread within that zone of pedestrian liveliness throughout the day in any other city?
Can you please show us a block in Koreatown comparable to Manhattan?
Heck, can you please show us a block in Koreatown comparable to the denser parts of Bronx, Brooklyn or Queens?
Wilshire and Vermont looks absolutely nothing like Upper Manhattan, in any way. Upper Manhattan is characterized by 5-10 floor prewar art deco apartment buildings and tenements, rising cheek-by-jowl. Wilshire and Vermont has a Shell gas station, a 60's-era office building/parking garage, and some modern apartments. Similarity appears to be 0.
Also why does "you can easily get around by train and bus" mean an area looks "like Manhattan"? I can "easily get around by train and bus" anywhere in Europe, so all of Europe looks "like Manhattan"? My college town of 30,000 was "easy to get around by train and bus" so it looks "like Manhattan"?
I have lived in Orange County, and am on Wilshire all the time. I know it extremely well, every section from SM to downtown.
The "mile or something stretch of high rise condos" is in Westwood, and very suburban in feel. There are almost no pedestrians or street-level retail in that part of Wilshire. One block away, you're on normal suburban streets. It's actually one of the less urban parts of Wilshire. Wilshire is much more urban just to the east, in Bev Hills, and just to the west, around UCLA.
You're being silly. First, I have lived in Southern CA. Second, NYC and Chicago are completely different from one another, and Chicago is not in the Northeast. Third, I never mentioned skyscrapers as having anything to do with density, you were the one who made such a claim. And fourth, LA is much less urban or dense than NYC.
If a place is "not Manhattan" then that doesn't mean "it's Dallas". You realize that 99% of places aren't "Manhattan" or "Dallas", right?
Do essentially every street has too look pre-war gothic Art Deco or anything associated with vintage manhattan to compare it to manhattan as urban? When I said I got off the train at Vermont I saw a level of urbanity that reminded of an upper manhattan or Brooklyn like area. It didn't have to look exactly like it just similar.
The point is that a city doesn't have to be a mirror image of Chicago or NYC to be considered urban. LA is largely developed and urban. This idea that it's just a giant suburb is such an outdated notion I'm surprised people even continue saying it. Westwood on down to Brentwood have suburbs in them but the main Wilshire drive is urban.
I really don't see how someone can think Koreatown, downtown, Hollywood, miracle mile and on down Wilshire is anything but urban. There has to be some extremely east coast bias there.
You make some good points but your premise is flawed. I posted a darn good aerial pic of LA showcasing the urban density and an article with links showing that the city is pretty darn urban despite the "big suburb" myth.
Based on structural built form and development intensity:
#1 NYC
#2 Chicago
#3 San Francisco #4 Washington D.C.Just No!!!
#5 Philadelphia
Stay in your lane Skippy. Philadelphia is 13 miles N-S. 8 Miles E-W. Basically uninterrupted urban density. hard core old scool urban density not the faux DC urban density.
LOL. LA is not even close to NYC in urbanity. Anyone who has been to both cities would surely know this.... cut as a break hahaha
This mindset is not outdated. LA is very car-centric and sprawling, it certainly has urban nodes spread throughout the city, but then there are large swaths of parking lots and suburbanesk development in what should be an urban zone: http://goo.gl/maps/KIA6t
LA just has a lot of infilling to do. You won't find developments like this near the cores of NYC, Chi, Philly, Boston, San Fran, DC....
Parking lots? Have you been to LA? They only exist in the Valley. Parking is the crappiest thing about LA and I've learned to parallel park like a pro. Its comments like that make me question whether people have actually visited or at least visited past 1985.
A city doesn't need to have tall manhattan esque buildings lining up every street to be called urban.
This us getting just plain silly. Los Angeles dwarfs the development in places like Boston, are you kidding me? The place is huge. Its development and look is nothing like the gothic prewar American style. Los Angeles is mire or less like a Latin American city or South Asian city in appearence. It reminds me more of a mix of Manilla, Philippines or Mexico City, not NYC, Chicago, London, Toronto, etc.
The former cities I listed are very urban and very dense.
Btw that pic is terribly old! That area is developed to where it's utterly unrecognizable now.
I assume this would exclude it from this 10 mile minimum requirement.
Quote:
Originally Posted by MichiVegas
Obviously NYC would be #1, by a longshot...
After that I think you have to include Philly, Boston, and SF
Then I'm torn between Chicago and DC. Chicago has a bigger core of urbanity than any other U.S. city (excepting NYC obviously) but it isn't totally continuous, because of the industrial heritage, railroad tracks and highways. DC does have a large, contigious core of urbanity (possibly the largest contiguous core after NYC), but feels a bit less intense than Boston, Philly, SF and Chicago.
So I guess I'll go with a Top 6, or Top 5 excepting NYC (because NYC has a core that's basically the other five cities combined).
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