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So basically LA and SD built over all their open land in the same total area as NYC to DC decided to have denser living spaces with more nature to go around? Hmmm...think I'm gonna take the latter. Why would I want a continuous built residential and commercial area instead of more high density and actually having some more natural space, but being the same drive time to each other? Isn't what LA and SD is doing kind of a bad thing? On a micro level it's like having a dense city with more park space vs a city that just builds allover the place with little parkspace.
Yes but 2 'dense' cities with intermitten sprawl/farms DOES NOT a megalopolis make, does it?
And bemoaning commentary about planning aside, this thread is NOT about life in the urban core, it's about life at the supposedly overlapping fringes of NE metro areas and whether or not the region truly deserves to be called a 'megalopolis'.
And rightfully so, since you are talking about double the population for the NYC-Philly UA. Just to put this in perspective, all of the so-called SoCal LA-SD "megaregion" Monclair is talking about is relatively "tiny", it would fit inside NYC area alone (population wise). Keep in mind that the whole state of California is only ~38 million people.
NY-Phi UAs
5,400 sq miles
Population: 24 million
Density: 4,444 ppsm
Yes but 2 'dense' cities with intermitten sprawl/farms DOES NOT a megalopolis make, does it?
And bemoaning commentary about planning aside, this thread is NOT about life in the urban core, it's about life at the supposedly overlapping fringes of NE metro areas and whether or not the region truly deserves to be called a 'megalopolis'.
Perhaps my expectations are too high.
That's the white elephant in the room that Northeasterners avoid
that 4,444 figure is way too high for the specific area in between NY and Philly, they wish it was 4,400 all the way. lol
Its probably less than half that in reality.
You can have Irvine, I'll take Princeton and also be an hour by train or car to NYC or Philly
You are selectively chosing the least developed space and calling that the typical. Its as silly as me calling the Milatary base the typical (though you already have as have I posted a picture of land in a milatary base in your NJTP image)
But where again is the connected space for LA and SD or do I just keep missing that based on my travels?
NY-Phi UAs
5,400 sq miles
Population: 24 million
Density: 4,444 ppsm
Exactly how is that double LA/SD?
well sure if you include the UA portions in more rural Chester, Bucks, Somerset, Burlington etc counties, the average comes way down adding small percentages of people. Calculate the density and population along the corrider itself and it is substantially higher without reducing population by any significant margin
Ray - a ? for you, have you ever traveled between NYC and Philly and not by NJTP (again this leaves the UA for many miles just as an FYI and avoids about 25 miles of the more populated parts)
You are selectively chosing the least developed space and calling that the typical. Its as silly as me calling the Milatary base the typical (though you already have as have I posted a picture of land in a milatary base in your NJTP image)
Both sides seems to subscribe to the best defense is a good offense theory. They need to show that X region is actually less dense than is normally perceived in order to boost their chosen region's cre-dense-tials.*
*See what I did there? OK, I'm sorry. I'll commit seppuku in shame then.
The UAs of New York and Philadelphia combined are in the neighborhood of 5400 sq miles. Since UAs have a density minimum, the parks can't be THAT big.
5400 sq miles...if you took all the UAs in the Greater Los Angeles region + San Diego's UA, you would not approach that size. And posters have the stones to refer to L.A. as sprawling im this very thread. You're just giving the NE a pass for its low-density suburbs that are bleeding into each other, gobbling up tons of land so that everyone gets a big house with a huge yard, front and back. Then you turn around and bash L.A. for sprawl! Wow. Los Angeles has several dozens of sq miles devoted to parkland + mountains + the ocean. The suburbs (following the CA model) are dense and efficient by U.S. standards. I don't see anything wrong with it.
Some of those parks are pretty sizable, but it's not just parks. It's the greenspaces that are often on private property as well (which includes forests and parts left to nature), plus the farms. If you want to see just the parks, then google maps does show them in green. There, you'll see that LA basically keeps most of its parks within the mountains while the valleys and basin are often straight development for a long ways with tiny patches of greenspace. However, if you use the satellite view or you do enough streetviews, you'll see a difference in that even the private property and areas not set aside as parks are also often much less developed with space between lands.
The preservation of the mountains is great. It was partially possible because development up there was more difficult. I wish LA had been able to legislate hurdles against developers in the valley and basins. It was tried in small fits, but just never successful. It could have been done since so much of socal started as smaller towns and cities with transit lines connecting them to each other. If we had been able to focus on those areas and setting aside more areas outside of those cities/towns and their transit corridors, it would have been fantastic. I don't think we can undo or bulldoze over what's grown over the areas, but who knows.
And while those suburbs are car-reliant, they aren't housing tons of car reliant people (as the people living in actual urban areas making up a larger balance of the total population) the way LA's are and there's at least a modest trade-off with these suburbs of greenspace. It's something like a bad compromise for LA where it doesn't get the city amenities or the ability to build and operate transit cost-effectively in a lot of parts or just have a lot of vibrancy in neighborhoods, and where there's little preservation of LA's unique lowland biosphere or the sort of open space that suburbs used to strive for.
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