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There are some major amenities outside the area, but I think there's a good argument for world class institutions within Central Los Angeles as defined by LA Times including stadiums, MOCA, LACMA, Sci-Arc, LA Philharmonic and its venues at the Walt Disney Center and Hollywood Bowl, plus an actually thriving arts scene and market. There are also neighborhoods just outside the LA Times definition such as the stuff in the University Park/Exposition Park neighborhood that should probably be considered within these 47 square mile borders, especially as those places are more connected by transit to the core and are physically closer to downtown itself than some of what the LA Times is including such as the northern slopes of the Santa Monica Mountains. Also, Broad Museum opens September. Oh wow.
Oh for sure, there is a ton of great stuff in there and enough to keep a tourist busy for a few days or a week. I just feel like it wouldn't quite be "world class" with those amenities.
And I agree that the amenities in University Park as well as Beverly Hills falling right outside of the Central LA borders certainly hurts the overall argument of Central LA as a complete city, but I wanted to be fair and just work with the designated definition.
Oh and I forgot that the Gold Line continues through Union Station - there are actually 3 Gold Line stations in Central LA, counting the Little Tokyo stop east of Union Station.
I think it was this thread where walk, bike and transit shares were posted and Philly did very well in bike score. It seems it is playing out with that late to the game bike share. it seems to have hit the 100K rides pretty quick. I bike often mostly for leisure but Philly is a really good biking town
Also FWIW I was just in Miami/South Beach and used the bike share there often very well used and so many locations, was quite a pleasure actually especially with the promenade
So yea, LA has an arguable case for being about as urban (if you're ignoring the percentages of urban/suburban, but just looking at the sheer amount of people living in areas that would be considered urban) of the four that aren't NYC.
Really, it's NYC in a very different tier, then a top five of Boston, Chicago, LA, Philly, and SF, then an arguable case for DC being included within the same tier as those 5.
So yea, LA has an arguable case for being about as urban (if you're ignoring the percentages of urban/suburban, but just looking at the sheer amount of people living in areas that would be considered urban) of the four that aren't NYC.
It's as dense. So that's a wash. Now where do transit, car ownership rates and urban design come into play?
I know it's been done before somewhere but I calculated the populations of a densest central 50 square mile area for the second-tier cities as well as for New York (using zip codes):
New York: 3,395,451
Chicago: 1,099,011
San Francisco: 1,001,754
Los Angeles: 978,686
Philadelphia: 934,979
Boston: 845,870
Washington: 637,455
So yea, LA has an arguable case for being about as urban (if you're ignoring the percentages of urban/suburban, but just looking at the sheer amount of people living in areas that would be considered urban) of the four that aren't NYC.
Really, it's NYC in a very different tier, then a top five of Boston, Chicago, LA, Philly, and SF, then an arguable case for DC being included within the same tier as those 5.
So you think L.A. is designed as urban as the other cities?
The built form of LA is not as obviously urban as the other second-tier cities. It is a fact though that LA has as large of an urban population as the other cities (for example the see the statistics I just posted about central 50 square miles)
I know it's been done before somewhere but I calculated the populations of a densest central 50 square mile area for the second-tier cities as well as for New York (using zip codes):
New York: 3,395,451
Chicago: 1,099,011
San Francisco: 1,001,754
Los Angeles: 978,686
Philadelphia: 934,979
Boston: 845,870
Washington: 637,455
San Francisco clearly is not. Will always be limited with geographic features on all 4 sides. I imagine some Oakland/Berkeley pulled in there. Otherwise it would be 805K for SF using 2010 Census. I don't think Chicago is contiguous either? But could be wrong. Someone earlier questioned the contiguity of that LA number as well. And Boston's doesn't appear to be contiguous either.
So I ask once again, where does transit fit into the discussion? That's as objective a metric as population density.
The one annoying thing about these threads is that people harp on the strengths of the cities they boost and completely ignore the weaknesses. So each thread becomes RaymondChandlerLives calculating the density of taco stands per acre or MDAllStar taking about the square footage of Class A commercial space DC has in the pipeline.
Central Los Angeles is on par with Chicago, Boston and Philadelphia density-wise, but it loses against these cities on transit/walking rates. So I don't see any objective way to rank it above these cities. There's Walkscore, but that doesn't tell us much about actual behavior whereas the Census stats on commuting and car ownership do (even if they are limited).
So the real battle royale comes down to LA and DC. L.A. is denser by a significant margin. But it also has fewer transit riders, walk commuters and bikers than DC by a healthy margin, and has a significantly higher SOV commuting share. It also has a much smaller CBD that's not nearly anywhere as transit-oriented as DC's. Yet nobody's really bothering to weigh the relative strengths and weakness of these places. It's simply "more people equals more urban."
It's an interesting matchup because L.A. is an underperfomer of sorts on more objective metrics. It has neighborhoods that are as dense as Ft. Greene, Bed-Stuy or Crown Heights but function nothing like these neighborhoods. DC, on the flipside, is nowhere as dense as Brooklyn, but has non-auto commuting and car ownership rates that aren't far off from Brooklyn's. It punches above its weight.
Last edited by BajanYankee; 06-26-2015 at 10:24 AM..
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