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There are thousands of areas I would consider urban, even well within the top 5, but comparing them to NYC makes them seem much less so. That does not mean they are not urban.
IMO, Santa Monica, while not having an EC built form, is definitely more urban and vibrant than an area like DuPont Circle. Walkable? Maybe not in the sense that we keep discussing here, but it's definitely a very urban area.
while I love SM I am not sure I would say its more walkable nor active. SM has some areas of high pedestrian activity around the 3rd street (think 3rd) mall and close in blocks plus the promenade and coast frontage (higher level not the lower portion). The challenge is that is has a little of shore/beach feel and a little of a smallish DT or main street feel.
For me it feels more like an Ocean city NJ meets King street in Old town Alexandria than it feels like a urban neighborhood like DuPont. That is just me but no SM does not feel as urban as DuPont even if similar activity levels. Jersey shore towns will have similar activity level in their season etc. Active does not mean urban. New Hope ( a sleepy hamlet) is active but not urban.
SM feels to me like many coastal towns that jut so happens to be smack up against LA and the West side. I love SM and is a place I considered living but I don't see it as being as urban as DuPont. Am excited to check out the expo line next time there though. Where does it end in SM?
while I love SM I am not sure I would say its more walkable nor active. SM has some areas of high pedestrian activity around the 3rd street (think 3rd) mall and close in blocks plus the promenade and coast frontage (higher level not the lower portion). The challenge is that is has a little of shore/beach feel and a little of a smallish DT or main street feel.
For me it feels more like an Ocean city NJ meets King street in Old town Alexandria than it feels like a urban neighborhood like DuPont. That is just me but no SM does not feel as urban as DuPont even if similar activity levels. Jersey shore towns will have similar activity level in their season etc. Active does not mean urban. New Hope ( a sleepy hamlet) is active but not urban.
SM feels to me like many coastal towns that jut so happens to be smack up against LA and the West side. I love SM and is a place I considered living but I don't see it as being as urban as DuPont. Am excited to check out the expo line next time there though. Where does it end in SM?
4th and Colorado next to the 3rd promenade and a block from the pier.
while I love SM I am not sure I would say its more walkable nor active. SM has some areas of high pedestrian activity around the 3rd street (think 3rd) mall and close in blocks plus the promenade and coast frontage (higher level not the lower portion). The challenge is that is has a little of shore/beach feel and a little of a smallish DT or main street feel.
For me it feels more like an Ocean city NJ meets King street in Old town Alexandria than it feels like a urban neighborhood like DuPont. That is just me but no SM does not feel as urban as DuPont even if similar activity levels. Jersey shore towns will have similar activity level in their season etc. Active does not mean urban. New Hope ( a sleepy hamlet) is active but not urban.
SM feels to me like many coastal towns that jut so happens to be smack up against LA and the West side. I love SM and is a place I considered living but I don't see it as being as urban as DuPont. Am excited to check out the expo line next time there though. Where does it end in SM?
While downtown SM is urban, it is not as urban or walkable as DuPont. Having said that, I think that downtown SM is definitly more active than Dupont.....at least it is during summer.
I wouldn't say it's an "East Coast city" thing. In San Francisco, I left my hotel and walked all over the city from one place to the next. Los Angeles wasn't like that. There was a big difference in how far we were willing to walk.
Honestly, there's a decent portion of SF that isn't that walkable. The entire southwestern quadrant of the city is not that walkable. Really, there's the highly urban and walkable northeast quadrant, than it sort of peters out after that to areas that pretty much function as very dense suburbs.
Hell, I don't even consider the outer Richmond or outer sunset areas to be all that walkable. I mean, yeah the houses come up to the street, but in terms of function, it functions no differently than a dense suburb like you see in Los Angeles. Here's an example of what I'm talking about: https://goo.gl/maps/vUvnL694JC22
SF's intense urban environment is only found in a 15 square mile area. The rest might as well be the less urbane areas of Los Angeles.
NYC is really the only city in America that truly has that sort of "intense urban environment" over a large area and not just concentrated in and around downtown. It's the only one that can compete with Paris, Barcelona, Madrid, Rome, London, Tokyo, Shanghai, Hong Kong,Milan, Buenos Aires, etc.
This is true of all cities, everywhere. Has nothing to do with anything.
You don't judge relative urbanity/walkability by looking at the absolute least urban/walkable area you can find.
The thing is with SF is that it's already a relatively small city. It's only 46 or so square miles of land. Compare that with Philly being 130 square miles or Chicago being 200+. They're walkable for large portions of their city limits, probably larger than SF.
So then why is Los Angeles being penalized for not having an urban fabric that spans across the entire city limits which is like 450 square miles? Los Angeles's inner 46 square miles is literally just as residentially dense than SF. It just doesn't have as impressive of a downtown area as SF.
The thing is with SF is that it's already a relatively small city. It's only 46 or so square miles of land. Compare that with Philly being 130 square miles or Chicago being 200+. They're walkable for large portions of their city limits, probably larger than SF.
So then why is Los Angeles being penalized for not having an urban fabric that spans across the entire city limits which is like 450 square miles? Los Angeles's inner 46 square miles is literally just as residentially dense than SF. It just doesn't have as impressive of a downtown area as SF.
Nobody's penalizing Los Angeles for not having an urban fabric that spans across 450 miles. I asked for one contiguous square mile with a pedestrian-scaled built environment. That means a streetscape that's not riddled with parking lots, strip malls, drive through restaurants, and super block buildings and structures.
Not even NYC has a completely walkable urban fabric across 303 sq. miles. In the outer boroughs, you have strip malls, wide streets with fast moving traffic, and all other types of auto-oriented development. But NYC obviously has a lot more areas that look like Fulton Street over a largely contiguous footprint.
The thing is with SF is that it's already a relatively small city. It's only 46 or so square miles of land. Compare that with Philly being 130 square miles or Chicago being 200+. They're walkable for large portions of their city limits, probably larger than SF.
So then why is Los Angeles being penalized for not having an urban fabric that spans across the entire city limits which is like 450 square miles? Los Angeles's inner 46 square miles is literally just as residentially dense than SF. It just doesn't have as impressive of a downtown area as SF.
Cause then you would have to admit that LA is urban.
I don't see how SM is more walkable than LB. LB is 100% walkable, parts of SM are not that walkable. The beach areas of both are similarly walkable, but there's no highway in LB like in SM, and there isn't a giant car-oriented shopping mall in LB like in SM. LB is certainly more rail-oriented than SM.
Both cities have plenty of midrise condos, street-facing retail and mid-level density.
SM is reasonably walkable and has a nice pedestrian mall, but honestly, the fact that we're talking about SM in terms of urbanity/walkability just shows how poorly LA fares on both counts, at least on a relative basis.
Quote:
Originally Posted by NOLA101
This is true of all cities, everywhere. Has nothing to do with anything.
You don't judge relative urbanity/walkability by looking at the absolute least urban/walkable area you can find.
Pretty good combination of posts right there.
And walkability between Santa Monica and Long Beach, NY is not a close match and in terms of other factors for urbanity, Santa Monica by almost any measure should blow out Long Beach, NY.
This attempt to make them equivalent is absurd. Even the most unfamiliar person with both places will have an extremely difficult time reconciling your statement with pictures or a google maps stroll through the heart of both. It becomes even more absurd for people who have actually been to both. Santa Monica is densely built up in its downtown area and is built far more densely because it needs to support not just the large residential population, but the massive weekday commuter population it services as well as the large tourist industry that supports local, regional, domestic, and international visitors.
There are a lot of cogent arguments for why LA isn't urban--it should make sense to stick with the ones that actually hold.
The thing is with SF is that it's already a relatively small city. It's only 46 or so square miles of land. Compare that with Philly being 130 square miles or Chicago being 200+. They're walkable for large portions of their city limits, probably larger than SF.
So then why is Los Angeles being penalized for not having an urban fabric that spans across the entire city limits which is like 450 square miles? Los Angeles's inner 46 square miles is literally just as residentially dense than SF. It just doesn't have as impressive of a downtown area as SF.
I strongly disagree with your premise - San Francisco is relatively small but the majority of it is very walkable and classically urban. Even the Outer Sunset, one of the less urban districts in the city, has neighborhood corridors like this: https://www.google.com/maps/@37.7427...8i6656!6m1!1e1
And SF has a lot of very dense, urban areas outside of the NE quadrant - the Mission, Castro, Haight-Ashbury, Lower-Haight, the Marina, Fillmore, Pacific Heights, Hayes Valley. All very walkable and urban. SF is obviously much smaller than LA but proportionally a much higher percentage of it is walkable and urban.
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