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I almost wonder if people are trolling with the Downtown LA inclusion. DTLA mostly looks like a third world country, not to mention it is very, very dead past 5 PM.
The best kept secret is that the Downtowns in Santa Monica and Pasadena slaughter Downtown Los Mangeles.
Downtown LA is definitely not in the running for best downtown in the U.S.A., but it's also not very, very dead past 5 PM these days and there is not really violent or gang-ridden. It certainly has a large homeless presence though.
Downtown Santa Monica and Pasadena slaughtering downtown LA is an overstatement. Downtown LA is definitely more bustling than either is overall. This is a fairly recent turn of events, only since things started to kick into gear with the adaptive reuse ordinance passed in 1999 and the spate of construction projects that have happened since.
Skyscrapers with residential and commercial, museums, and a significant amount of green space have been added in the last decade and downtown LA is most assuredly more than just a CBD for commuters now. This is obvious in that the population count has gone from a population of about 27K in the 2000 census to 67K this year. It's where a lot of nightlife and interesting restaurants have popped up in the last two decades and it's going to be a lot better and more bustling in a very short amount of time as there's such a large amount of construction replacing surface lots and much of the infrastructure improvements currently under construction are particularly impactful for downtown. Within a decade, downtown LA will be as bustling as any downtown in tier below NYC is now (which many can currently agree are great), though those downtowns themselves will likely have improved as well so it'll be interesting to see if downtown LA can catch up to these moving targets.
Downtown LA is definitely not in the running for best downtown in the U.S.A., but it's also not very, very dead past 5 PM these days and there is not really violent or gang-ridden. It certainly has a large homeless presence though.
Downtown Santa Monica and Pasadena slaughtering downtown LA is an overstatement. Downtown LA is definitely more bustling than either is overall. This is a fairly recent turn of events, only since things started to kick into gear with the adaptive reuse ordinance passed in 1999 and the spate of construction projects that have happened since.
Skyscrapers with residential and commercial, museums, and a significant amount of green space have been added in the last decade and downtown LA is most assuredly more than just a CBD for commuters now. This is obvious in that the population count has gone from a population of about 27K in the 2000 census to 67K this year. It's where a lot of nightlife and interesting restaurants have popped up in the last two decades and it's going to be a lot better and more bustling in a very short amount of time as there's such a large amount of construction replacing surface lots and much of the infrastructure improvements currently under construction are particularly impactful for downtown. Within a decade, downtown LA will be as bustling as any downtown in tier below NYC is now (which many can currently agree are great), though those downtowns themselves will likely have improved as well so it'll be interesting to see if downtown LA can catch up to these moving targets.
These are definitely some solid points.
Perhaps DTLA is more bustling than Downtown Santa Monica and Pasadena, but the latter two are significantly cleaner and safer and you don't have to worry about getting shanked by a crackhead.
Bustle is great but if the place isn't even livable then what good is it really?
Perhaps DTLA is more bustling than Downtown Santa Monica and Pasadena, but the latter two are significantly cleaner and safer and you don't have to worry about getting shanked by a crackhead.
Bustle is great but if the place isn't even livable then what good is it really?
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You need to actually understand the methodologies though for this to really be reasonable. DTLA has a massive commuter and visitor population compared to its residential population, but that's not going to factor into its crimes per capita rating though the number of human interactions and people passing through the area is huge. It's the same reason why Midtown in NYC is supposed to be among the most dangerous neighborhoods in the city though that's truly a ridiculous statement.
The other thing to keep in mind is that downtown Los Angeles usually encompasses something like 5 square miles (slightly less when not including the areas north of the 101 where Union Station and Chinatown are, slightly more when you do; I generally do) and there are certainly concentrations of where things are a lot sketchier than others. To put that in perspective, the Loop is one and half square miles while Center City is about 2 square miles. So in that large 5 square miles area there's going to be a lot of inner variability.
Finally, one other thing to keep in mind is when these stats were sampled especially for something like employment rates and median household income which these seem to take in. The last official census had something like 40K people living there up from 27K in 2000. The latest estimates have it now surged to 67K and that influx is almost certainly very lopsided towards the more affluent given that the price of the vast majority of the new units that had been created.
I think a lot of perceptions about downtown Los Angeles have a large lag time in terms of being updated. It was definitely mostly pretty grim in the 80s, 90s and the first half of the 00s and probably the 70s and decades earlier though I wasn't around for that. That's a long time for a place to be mostly down and out. There's really only been any particularly obvious signs of things going on the up and up in the last decade or so, though the grounds for that was set earlier. Downtown LA may not be a top tier downtown contender right now (I'm of the opinion it's obviously NYC, and then a good argument for the tier down are Philadelphia, Chicago, Boston, SF and DC, though obviously this shifts quite a bit and has different things depending on personal preferences), but it's definitely now one of the better US downtowns and is now actually worth visiting if someone is taking an extended trip to Los Angeles. Obviously, I wouldn't recommend hanging out in Skid Row or most of the Wholesale District, but there's a lot more than that.
Perhaps DTLA is more bustling than Downtown Santa Monica and Pasadena, but the latter two are significantly cleaner and safer and you don't have to worry about getting shanked by a crackhead. Its funny how people put up these charts and graphs. I love living downtown.
Bustle is great but if the place isn't even livable then what good is it really?
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But to me any little suburban dt is going to be cleaner than any major city downtown. Let be real. When I want major cultural amenities, professional sports, great dining, nightlife, shopping, great public transportation, history, historic architecture I will pick dtla any day over those two. DTLA is growing in leaps and bounds. I can not think of one area in the region that is growing more. Those charts are ridiculous. I rarely drive and walk much more living downtown. All my amenities are all within walking distance.
Couldn't you say The Loop has a massive commuter and visitor population in comparison to the resident population of just 33k? Yet it grades out significantly more favorably than DTLA:
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[quote=Codederick;49897682]Couldn't you say The Loop has a massive commuter and visitor population in comparison to the resident population of just 33k? Yet it grades out significantly more favorably than DTLA:
Right, I'm certain the Loop is affected by that same downwards pull which accounts for why its crime and safety ratings on there are bad. In conjunction with that, there are the other two major factors I mentioned which includes the Loop being a far smaller and more tightly constrained area and the time at which stats were updated.
With all that being said though, downtown LA is definitely not a better downtown than the Loop and a number of other downtowns in the US. I think it'll get there (as in how good those downtowns are currently) within a decade. I think a combination of those factors I mentioned and that the current state of downtown LA does not put it in the same tier as the Loop, Center City, and a few others account for the ratings you're getting on that site. Again, though, it's still one of the better downtowns to visit in the US now and is worth visiting for someone visiting Los Angeles.
But to me any little suburban dt is going to be cleaner than any major city downtown. Let be real. When I want major cultural amenities, professional sports, great dining, nightlife, shopping, great public transportation, history, historic architecture I will pick dtla any day over those two. DTLA is growing in leaps and bounds. I can not think of one area in the region that is growing more. Those charts are ridiculous. I rarely drive and walk much more living downtown. All my amenities are all within walking distance.
I'll definitely give you the logistics. The walkability and public transit of DTLA are clearly better than the other two although Santa Monica is very walkable and I think it's as good, if not better than DTLA when it comes to dining and nightlife options, although DTLA does have a more down to earth vibe.
The only nightlife venue in LA that I actually had any respect for was Clifton's which did happen to be in DTLA.
Pasadena is definitely on the suburban side but I've always found Santa Monica to be largely urban. It's obviously not a big city but it's just apartments and concrete (besides the beach) and has a population density over 10k/square mile.
I'll definitely give you the logistics. The walkability and public transit of DTLA are clearly better than the other two although Santa Monica is very walkable and I think it's as good, if not better than DTLA when it comes to dining and nightlife options, although DTLA does have a more down to earth vibe.
The only nightlife venue in LA that I actually had any respect for was Clifton's which did happen to be in DTLA.
Pasadena is definitely on the suburban side but I've always found Santa Monica to be largely urban. It's obviously not a big city but it's just apartments and concrete (besides the beach) and has a population density over 10k/square mile.
Santa Monica is great, and it's fantastic that there are these great secondary nodes like downtown Santa Monica and Pasadena, but I don't think downtown Santa Monica's restaurants and nightlife really competes with downtown LA's. There are a lot of highlights that are certainly quite good, but the only places in the running are downtown LA, Ktown, and central Hollywood when it comes to the numbers and variety offered and how much actually stays open to and past midnight. Clifton's is an interesting place and I do like it, but singling that out for nightlife in LA seems odd to me.
Santa Monica is largely urban, but that's not hard to do with city limits that small. SF and Boston are small, of course, and the argument has been similarly levied, but Santa Monica is another order of magnitude smaller than those. The density of central LA which does cover a physical area similar to SF and Boston (that is to say, an order of magnitude up in size than Santa Monica proper) is actually far higher. In the LA Times mapping LA project, they took the boundaries of Central LA to include 57.87 (compare that to Santa Monica's 8.41 square miles or SF's 46.89 square miles) and that gave it a density of 14,458 ppsqm (compare that to Santa Monica's 2016 10,989 ppsqm or San Francisco's 2016 18,573 ppsqm). I'm not going to go into the legwork of updating those numbers for central LA to 2016 estimates, but it almost certainly went up by quite about in the 16 years since considering that just the 5 square miles of downtown LA added 40,000 people alone with almost all of that happening in the half of downtown that's not Skid Row or working warehouses and there's been heavy construction in the region during that time period especially in Hollywood and Koreatown.
Again though, I'm not saying downtown LA is a better downtown than that of SF or Boston. I don't think it's on that level right now and it is not a contender for best downtown in the US. It's just quite a bit nicer and more active currently than how it's often depicted by some posters on this site. I do think it's probably the most improved US downtown since the turn of the millennium, because there was a large span of time where much of it was pretty awful.
Last edited by OyCrumbler; 10-22-2017 at 04:05 PM..
If DTLA had 67,000 residents in five square miles, that would need to be more like 200,000 to be like the top second-tier downtowns. That would be 40,000/sm. DTLA is going in a good direction but it has a long way to go to be great.
My own downtown, Seattle, has a ways to go too. State numbers showed about 29,500/sm for 2017 over about 2.7 square miles or 26,300/sm for 4.5 square miles. When these are more like 40,000/sm it'll feel like a cohesive downtown by the standards of the group after NY.
Of the cities I’ve visited
Chicago
Philadelphia
Miami
Atlanta
Minneapolis
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