Which is better for car-free SF-lifestyle (LA or Seattle?) (living, best, compared)
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Which West Coast city offers the best alternative to SF-style urban living: LA or Seattle?
LA is obviously far bigger, has more density and probably has more walkable urban areas. But, the city is also far larger and is known for its car culture.
Seattle is a smaller city, but tends to be rated higher on walkability/transit (despite having a far smaller transit system), urbanism.
After living car-free in both cities I would have to say Los Angeles was much better for me. Way more options to choose from. LA's public transportation covered more areas, runs more often and in many cases 24 hours. Seattle's is good but to me LA's is much better.
Which West Coast city offers the best alternative to SF-style urban living: LA or Seattle?
LA is obviously far bigger, has more density and probably has more walkable urban areas. But, the city is also far larger and is known for its car culture.
Seattle is a smaller city, but tends to be rated higher on walkability/transit (despite having a far smaller transit system), urbanism.
This is a great question, but also a difficult one to answer. Both cities outside of their respective urban cores have more of a node-based urban form compared to SF (albeit, with LA on a much larger scale), so good transit connections are especially important citywide.These cities have two of the most ambitious rail expansion plans in the country right now, with a lot of new lines already funded, so the landscape will be very different in both places within the next decade. And if ST3 (a new $15 billion rail expansion bill going to voters next year) passes, Seattle's rail network will grow even more.
But looking at right now - I'd say this: a substantially higher percentage of Seattle is walkable and more traditionally urban than LA and Seattle has - pound for pound - a better bus system (probably one of the best in the country) and higher share of people commuting by transit. That said, LA is so much bigger than Seattle, peaks higher than Seattle, and being the much bigger city has a lot more walkable and urban sections than Seattle in the absolute. It also currently has a better rail network, which is a big deal.
So I guess you could say it depends. Probably the closest you're going to get to living an SF-style car-free lifestyle in either city is living somewhere in one of Seattle's adjacent-to-Downtown neighborhoods like Capitol Hill (getting a subway station next year), First Hill (getting a streetcar this fall), or Belltown (easy access to a lot of transit options). One advantage Seattle has is it does have more directly adjacent to Downtown urban, walkable neighborhoods like Queen Anne, South Lake Union, First Hill, Capitol Hill, International District, Belltown, etc. And Seattle's urban form, neighborhood fluidity, and structure of the urban core - while still quite different from SF - is more similar to SF than LA is.
With LA, you have fairly large walkable, urban areas spread throughout the area. Aside from Downtown, you've got places like Koreatown, Hollywood/WeHo, Downtown Pasadena, many other dense walkable corridors and nodes throughout the Westside. And the transit options range from excellent to pretty good in these areas. It won't feel like SF at all, though.
The data released by the City Council shows that Seattle is made up of 16% "urban/walkable" area, 60% single family residential, and 22% industrial/hospital/university/park use. Seattle is 83 square miles of land, so that means that Seattle has 13.2 total urban/walkable area of land within city limits.
Description:
Seattle's city core is walkable (including the CBD, SLU, Belltown, PS, ID, Cap and First Hill, and LQA). And then outside that core, you have little urban villages that are walkable (Ballard, Fremont, UD, Roosevelt, Georgetown, Columbia City, and parts of Greenwood). The space between those villages and the city core is nearly all single family homes. Transit that connects the city core to these villages is in the form of a fairly reliable bus system.
Opinion:
Seattle is fairly walkable within certain designated areas. Living within those areas means that yes, you can live car-free. Outside those areas? Probably less so.
After living car-free in both cities I would have to say Los Angeles was much better for me. Way more options to choose from. LA's public transportation covered more areas, runs more often and in many cases 24 hours. Seattle's is good but to me LA's is much better.
It seems to be kind of tie for myself.
I ride my bicycle every where as much as I can, so I couldn't care less about public transit running or not.
What I get from both of these cities is that the car culture isn't so hard-pressed in these areas compared to the places I have been living.
Now I just got to find a way to get out of my motor-intensive, line of work and into something that doesn't involve burning fuel.
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