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Here's an article from 2015 that looks at just a 53 square mile central L.A. The data is old and I think transit share has gone down recently in L.A. too, but it's the only study I've seen. It's in comparison to San Francisco, which has much higher stats but the contrast isn't as stark at least, as measured against the city as a whole.
Transit: S.F. 33.1 percent, central L.A. 19.5 percent, L.A. City 10.9 percent
Walking: S.F. 9.8 percent, central L.A. 5.2 percent, L.A. City 3.6 percent
Bicycling: S.F. 3.8 percent, central L.A. 1.4 percent, L.A. City 1.0 percent
Driving Alone: S.F. 36.3 percent, central L.A. 57.7 percent, L.A. City 67.4 percent
a lot of people voted for Atlanta but I don't see anyone discussing it ITT. As someone moving there very soon sight unseen, I am interested in your opinions
Midtown has exploded. It doesn’t have tons of tall buildings, but it has lots of low/mid-rise streetwise development with tons of street activity, is pretty walkable, and is very vibrant.
LA has a denser big area than Seattle, but it's across the freeway.
The transit, walking, and bike stats are for both city-of, county, and metro...LA is way behind on all of those, and I suspect it would stay behind even if that dense area was counted separately...for starters LA's density comes with massive amounts of parking.
Right, the freeway and massive amounts of parking is a hindrance of sorts, but LA's core area the size of the city of Seattle is still really dense and has a lot of transit lines. I think in terms of total contiguous urban, walkable area, LA's is much larger than Seattle's, but it's a much smaller proportion of the city and metropolitan area than Seattle's is. The large surface lots in that area are now far less common than they were in the year 2000 though they haven't necessarily been replaced with skyscrapers. It used to feel like every block had a sizable one and with some blocks essentially being nothing but parking lots.
Seattle has built or are building 30 buildings of 400' or taller in THIS DECADE, only in greater Downtown. I'm counting at least five more in the previous decade when most projects were shorter. Also Bellevue has completed six.
As for King Street Station, it was renovated several years ago. Someday you should visit.
PS, for the other posters, in LA's wildest dreams it can only imagine transit commute shares like Seattle's, any way you slice them. Same with pedestrian and bike commuting. Yes, all three at the same time. LA's SOV commute shares have been sunbeltish, while Seattle's (within city limits) were lower than Chicago's at last count by the Census ACS.
I said built, not buildings not yet completed. Bellevue is not located within Seattle.
I was at the Amtrak station a few months ago. It looks great, it is the size of a DMV office.
Apparently LA has pulled off quite a feat by simultaneously having such horrible mass transit while leading the nation in light rail ridership.
I've heard that there are types of transit beyond light rail. Overall, LA is a peer of Atlanta, Denver, and Portland in transit commute share -- not a peer of Seattle. Things get closer using the 52 square mile version, but Seattle would be much higher too in that small of an area.
If you mean completed towers over 400' within Seattle city limits (obviously a small area compared to the city of LA), there have been 23, all in greater Downtown. Another 12 are underway in greater Downtown. More importantly, construction overall has been far larger than DTLA.
It's probably not #1, but I think San Diego gets an honorable mention. SD has 40 buildings over 150 ft tall, of which 23 were built in the 2000s. The pic of downtown below shows a comparison of 1995 vs. 2016. Note that 8 out of the 40 buildings were built after this picture, so it's even more dense now. There are also a handful of high-rises under construction as we speak.
Beyond tall building construction, the downtown and other areas have become significantly more dense with better streetlife.
Haven't most American cities had a huge increase in their urbanity since 2000? In order to really answer that you have to have visited every major city both then and now.
Here in Minneapolis we haven't had many new towers but we have filled in most of the sea of parking lots that existed in Downtown East and the Warehouse District twenty years ago. We have built hundreds of new midrises in the neighborhoods outside of downtown, and begun a successful light rail system. We have also reformed the zoning code to upzone the entire city. The city population has grown more than 10% this decade and Minneapolis proper is the fastest growing municipality in the metro, St Paul proper is the second fastest. I don't know where that puts us compared to other cities but I get the impression that similar things are happening across the country.
It's probably not #1, but I think San Diego gets an honorable mention. SD has 40 buildings over 150 ft tall, of which 23 were built in the 2000s. The pic of downtown below shows a comparison of 1995 vs. 2016. Note that 8 out of the 40 buildings were built after this picture, so it's even more dense now. There are also a handful of high-rises under construction as we speak.
Beyond tall building construction, the downtown and other areas have become significantly more dense with better streetlife.
Very cool photo comparison. That is a significant difference. Out of curiosity, did some of that increased urbanity happen between 95 and 2000 or did it really only start after 2000? I ask because I was in San Diego in 2001 and I remember it being significantly more urban looking than the 95 photo, although it was a long time ago and I could be totally wrong there.
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