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The better question is, where do you come up with 5 sq miles for DTLA? People are coming up with all these macro figures and broad scale residential density stats, with little substance as to what is inside of them.
5 sq mi DTLA? There's one story buildings across the street from large parking lots in the area you described. 6 blocks from Staples Center.
It sounds like you are just discussing the official Downtown DC BID, which is about 1/4 of the actual "size of Downtown Washington, which has more ambiguous boundaries, but essentially stretches from the West End, and GW Univ/Foggy Bottom, all the way East to Union Station, and South to the National Mall.
I believe CC Philadelphia actually has a larger imprint by square mileage than the official DT DC BID, but that still cuts off much of DT Washington. The difference of DC, (and most major American cities, not just LA) is that from Downtown, there's very little to almost no drop off in every direction from 12-14 story buildings to either 6-9 story buildings, or you depending on the street or direction you may enter an urban rowhome neighborhood. Directly away from the DT.
Downtown Los Angeles (DTLA) is the central business district of Los Angeles, California, as well as a diverse residential neighborhood of some 85,000 people, and covers 5.84 sq mi (15.1 km2).[3] A 2013 study found that the district is home to over 500,000 jobs.[4] It is also part of Central Los Angeles.
As of 2019, DTLA has 85k Population in a 5 sq mile area.
You have to understand that Los Angeles has Earthquake codes. City worker's weren't allowed to build 12 - 14 story buildings on every single block.But again it still has more taller buildings than D.C.
Yes there's parking lots downtown because there's cars literally everywhere you go. That still doesn't take away from the urbanized core of Central LA.
I understand you're POV, So when comparing different cities, it's best to compare em on a pound for pound assessment.
This is becoming reminiscent of the "well of course San Francisco is the best downtown" threads where the boosters get confused over what and where exactly the downtown is.
There's absolutely no ambiguity as to what DTLA is....its five square miles from the Arts District to Westlake.
To you maybe. In commercial real estate, urban studies, public policy, and other worlds, downtown boundaries are highly subjective.
For this thread, there's a bizarre assertion that DC's downtown covers a tiny area and LA's covers a massive area. They're using two completely different sets of criteria.
Another thing that makes DC feel way more urban than Los Angeles is the intensity of development in the urban core.
Looking at the Q4 Colliers report on Downtown office supply:
Washington DC CBD: 144.1 million square feet
Los Angeles CBD: 33.7 million square feet
I'm not entirely sure, but I don't think the DC figure includes government office space either (I think this only tracks leased space, so only private office leased by private or government tenants). If true, then the actual office space might be dramatically more.
Also, a lot of the sidewalks in central DC are double or even quadruple the width of those in DTLA. That is another reason why LA tends to feel suburban car centric and DC very urban. You're often jammed just a couple feet from fast 30-40mph roads, sans 7th, Broadway, and Spring. 7th Street I get roughly 14 feet or so, Broadway I get maybe 17 feet ish. Near Gallery Place I get around 40 foot sidewalks, parts of K Street a whopping 50 feet.
People aren't imagining that DC is more urban, it absolutely in far more of an urban format, has way less surface parking, way less garages and deadspace, almost every building is mixed use, and is built much more for pedestrians with wide sidewalks and street trees. It also has a significantly higher CBD office employment and share, which gives it more of a pulsing big city vibe when you're taking Metro or commuter rail.
Yea, I agree on a scale of a few square miles, DC is more urban than LA's peak contiguous square miles of urbanity. LA's downtown has radically changed in a short amount of time and what it doesn't have in terms of commercial square footage is partly made up for with very high-density high-rise residential, but it's still not quite enough. It's when you go past a few square miles that LA comes out as more urban as then it has a lot of mixed-use neighborhoods that also have high-rises and some with a lot of office space such as Hollywood, the Wilshire Corridor stretch, and downtown Culver City. There are other ones further out like downtown Long Beach, Burbank, and Pasadena, but those don't have the contiguously dense and urban development the other ones mentioned do.
I do think that by mid-decade, there's a decent chance that LA for an area of a few square miles also is more urban than DC for that equivalent few square miles. The rational for that is because LA's downtown area has been building mid-rise and high-rise developments, usually mixed-use, to replace the surface parking lots so large surface parking lots that previously had zero residents, one small business (the parking business) with potentially zero to a couple employees working that surface parking lot at a time then suddenly become a high-rise with hundreds of residents and/or office workers with a few commercial tenants and dozens of employees of those commercial tenants. That's a massive changeover.
Last edited by OyCrumbler; 01-19-2021 at 11:01 AM..
Wrong about office stats. The Colliers figure is all of DC, not just the "CBD." They have 146.4 msf for DC overall, and 47 msf for "CBD," the latter being a small area apparently.
But let's step back further. Brokerage reports are not created for internet fans to compare cities. Convenient but misleading.
They're compilations of varying standards and completeness, created to understand each local market separately. "Downtown" is whatever section is in the middle, whether that's 1 square mile or 50. They can include 60% of the total inventory in the area they do count, or 95%. They sometimes make mistakes like double-counting.
Wrong about office stats. The Colliers figure is all of DC, not just the "CBD." They have 146.4 msf for DC overall, and 47 msf for "CBD," the latter being a small area apparently.
But let's step back further. Brokerage reports are not created for internet fans to compare cities. Convenient but misleading.
They're compilations of varying standards and completeness, created to understand each local market separately. "Downtown" is whatever section is in the middle, whether that's 1 square mile or 50. They can include 60% of the total inventory in the area they do count, or 95%. They sometimes make mistakes like double-counting.
I'm arguing LA vs. DC on both sides.
Fair, but I am not aware of much leased office space in the District limits but not in the CBD.. I guess Navy Yard and Waterfront have some? I'd guess the DC total is pretty close to the CBD (semi broadly defined). At least comparable to the vast swath of land people are using as DTLA in their comparisons.
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Originally Posted by Cyborg77
Downtown Los Angeles (DTLA) is the central business district of Los Angeles, California, as well as a diverse residential neighborhood of some 85,000 people, and covers 5.84 sq mi (15.1 km2).[3] A 2013 study found that the district is home to over 500,000 jobs.[4] It is also part of Central Los Angeles.
As of 2019, DTLA has 85k Population in a 5 sq mile area.
Pre-Covid Downtown DC's "daytime" population was over 225k on 138 sq blocks of contiguous pavement, and again the DT DC BID is not half of what most consider total "downtown". My guess is that number is close to double or triple, encompassing the entire downtown core, without crossing, highways, nor rivers into Arlington. There were over 800,000 jobs in that Downtown BID alone, prior to COVID. And this doesn't even begin to get into the difference in tourism traffic in DT DC vs DTLA.
DC becomes a city of 1.1-1.2 million during the work week, which would be 10th in the country in 61 sq mi. I believe Boston comes close to this as well.
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Originally Posted by Folks3000
Fair, but I am not aware of much leased office space in the District limits but not in the CBD.. I guess Navy Yard and Waterfront have some? I'd guess the DC total is pretty close to the CBD (semi broadly defined). At least comparable to the vast swath of land people are using as DTLA in their comparisons.
Those stats are city wide yes, but they do not include federal gov't space, that is just leased office buildings that Colliers can keep track of city wide.
There's leased office space in all four quadrants of the city, but once you get East of the Anacostia River it's very little, and places like Georgetown have some along the Waterfront, as well as Southwest has some at the Wharf being built, but not a whole lot of space there. Navy Yard is the largest office district in the city away from the traditional urban/DT core. There's a push from the current mayor to add office space for local "DC gov't" facilities in former decaying neighborhoods away from downtown in places like NE Washington.
Fair, but I am not aware of much leased office space in the District limits but not in the CBD.. I guess Navy Yard and Waterfront have some? I'd guess the DC total is pretty close to the CBD (semi broadly defined). At least comparable to the vast swath of land people are using as DTLA in their comparisons.
The report is publicly available. Yes they do appear to define "CBD" pretty tightly, omitting areas that are sometimes included (an illustration of how subjective this stuff can be).
I don't know what percentage of the market they capture, or how accurate it is. DC isn't my market.
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Originally Posted by 2Easy
I think that the crux of the issue is that the borders for what could be considered "downtown" in LA might not be comparable to the downtown borders in DC, Dallas, or Chicago because the word "downtown" could mean slightly different things in each place.
Many people in LA define DTLA by freeways,but I'm opposed to letting people in cars define anything unrelated to cars or travel. The borders of DTLA should be decided by pedestrian experience and based on that experience, I don't think that it's a stretch at all to consider Washington Street/the A line as the southern boundary. Yes, there are lots of 1-3 story buildings, but those have historically been part of DTLA.
Even in LA there really isn't consensus. The LA Times gets it about right for most people, but many will say that nothing west of the 110 fwy or south of the 10 fwy is downtown because they define downtown strictly by freeways. Others will consider Dodger Stadium to be in downtown or all of Koreatown to be downtown. If you define downtown as something besides just tall office buildings (and I do), where to draw the line gets very ambiguous.
Pre-Covid Downtown DC's "daytime" population was over 225k on 138 sq blocks of contiguous pavement, and again the DT DC BID is not half of what most consider total "downtown". My guess is that number is close to double or triple, encompassing the entire downtown core, without crossing, highways, nor rivers into Arlington. There were over 800,000 jobs in that Downtown BID alone, prior to COVID. And this doesn't even begin to get into the difference in tourism traffic in DT DC vs DTLA.
DC becomes a city of 1.1-1.2 million during the work week, which would be 10th in the country in 61 sq mi. I believe Boston comes close to this as well.
Well every city population goes up during the work week and I guess the main difference is Los Angeles has multiple city centers. Some don't even view DTLA as the city core for tourism.
Most might say the Hollywood area or Century City to the Westside. But for what it's worth, D.C is most definitely an urban powerhouse for it's size.
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