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In the LA forum, it's fairly common for visitors to the city to describe Hollywood (a district in LA) as suburban. As a native Angeleno who hasn't seen other parts of the country, when I hear suburban, I picture a less dense, less built up, less stores and clubs built right up to the street, less pedestrian traffic sort of place. In other words, the opposite of Hollywood. Automobile congestion there is worse than DTLA. Hollywood and the adjacent city of West Hollywood includes Hollywood Blvd, Sunset, Santa Monica, Melrose Ave. and although not a forest of skyscrapers, there are some midrise to possibly highrise buildings. Heading east, there are more of the shopping centers with large parking lots facing the street. But I see Hollywood and Highland, and have a hard time imagining "suburb." How large does a "main street" have to get before it's considered urban?
Does the presence of SFRs with front and back yards disqualify an area from being urban? Almost nowhere in LA is there a large area of SFRs without low rise apartments mixed in - the blending of citified areas with SFRs and low rise apartments is normal. Growing up in my bubble, I didn't realize that other parts of the country, especially the east, weren't built like this.
So, is Hollywood really suburban? If so, are there similar suburbs in the U.S? Maybe something in Brooklyn, The Bronx or Queens? Something in the sunbelt?
"Suburb" can mean different things depending on the time and place. Hollywood was a streetcar suburb, which gives it its basic urban form, with businesses and mixed-use buildings along the major avenues (most of which carried streetcar or interurban lines) of low-rise or mid-rise size, and residential neighborhoods behind those avenues (generally a mix of low-rise apartments and single-family homes.) Commercial buildings were zero lot line, with the building entrance right at the sidewalk instead of having a parking lot in front--or a small one, enough for a few cars but not a big-box sea of parking. Even decades after the streetcars were gone, the urban form of the streetcar suburb remains. The 1950s auto suburb, what comes to mind for many of us when people think of suburbs, has a very different urban form--they didn't have streetcar lines, so were more geographically spread out, and everyplace had to have parking areas to make room for the cars needed to get around. Zoning regulations limited the presence of apartment buildings in many suburban tracts. Before the electric streetcar, there were horsecar suburbs--those on the east coast featured row houses and brownstones, while California's tended to be wood and often detached, if close-set. Los Angeles' early cable cars resulted in dense, vertical suburbs of this style, but many have long since been replaced by downtown skyscrapers or later industrial development.
Don't worry, Hollywood is an urban place by modern standards--but its origins were as a streetcar suburb, which gives it a suburban type of urban form. Downtowns are another type of urban form--and auto suburbs are yet another type of urban form. These forms are driven by technology, climate, economics and social mores.
The time I visited Hollywood I thought it looked rather suburban — as a 15 year old who barely seemed any American city outside of the NYC metro and from Long Island, suburban meant looked it could fit in Long Island. Glancing at Hollywood on streetview, I have no clue why I thought that. It looks quite dense and busy.
I remember it looking sleepy-ish, a bit gritty looking. Stopped at a burger joint and took a look at the movie-themed tourist sites, but didn't stay for long. The differences I notice from east coast urbanity:
1) Streets are rather wide, but east coast cities have some wide streets
2) Storefronts tend to be one story more often
3) And housing as you said, is a mix of apartment buildings and single family home — high and low density, rather than a consistent mesh of something in between
Vancouver is a bit similar.
The closest east coast match I can think of is relatively new (mid-century built up maybe 1930-1960) areas of Eastern Queens in New York City. Has all 3 of those characteristics, perhaps because of the era it was built. Was not a streetcar suburb but rather first railroad suburb and then a bus suburb. Cars weren't completely widespread, but rail didn't reach to the neighborhood — it was built past the street car era, buses were used to connect to the rail / subway system. Here's a few views:
In LA it seems like every commercial street is wide, which seems less pleasant to me, but partly it's what I'm used to. It's also partly why jaywalking is acceptable here — with narrower streets and slower traffic, crossing at whim is less of a hazard. Again, lots of single family homes but some attached home tossed in rather than apartment buildings:
so you can find east coast districts with some similarities, and many differences. You might notice that my views appeared to be a bit less like a destination than Hollywood. My views are outer city neighborhoods, while Hollywood is close to the center city. As New York is an older city, closer in districts are built in a different style. It's also a rather Asian neighborhood; Asians have replaced part of the former white population
Different regions of the country look different. California is not Illinois and not New York. Try poking around streetview in cities across the country. Best way to travel if you don't have money or time!
Depends on what part of Hollywood you're talking about, I suppose. Parts of Sunset are a bit more "suburban," albeit in an urbanized way. But there's no way anyone can seriously describe Hollywood Boulevard between Vine and, say, La Brea, as "suburban." Or if that's suburban, then so is most of Manhattan and most of every other American city. Along Hollywood Boulevard you have a lot of bigger buildings built right up against the sidewalk, tons of pedestrians, and the side streets mostly lack single family homes -- solid apartment territory there, including some pretty big buildings (and very limited parking).
But... more so than many areas, Hollywood encompasses a range of settings. We lived in the "flatlands" just off of Hollywood Boulevard, but our experience was drastically different than those who lived just two blocks away up the steep hill. And while things are changing, the streetscapes of Hollywood Boulevard and Sunset Boulevard are very different. I can understand how Sunset gets hit with the "suburban" label, mostly because it is more car-oriented and is (or was, anyway; haven't been back in recent years, although when we lived in the area I was lucky enough to have participated in a neighborhood "walk audit" that focused on identifying room for improvement) more gritty with fewer pedestrians and more parking lots and lower buildings. Hollywood Boulevard, on the other hand, was far more "urban" in form. The smaller side streets were more of a mix. Santa Monica seemed to be more like Sunset.
I do think, however, that many of the people describing Hollywood as "suburban" are probably not doing so because they're evaluating various forms, but because it's the cool and trendy thing to bash LA as one big suburb.
New Yorkers would call Queens suburban. Queens Blvd didn't seem all that narrower than any other main drag anywhere. Way wider than Hollywood Blvd anyway, at the heart of Hollywood at least. Forest Hills might be a comparison. There around Continental you have an active district, but just off it it's apartment buildings and then all single family homes beyond. Maybe Rego Park too compared to around Western.
New Yorkers would call Queens suburban. Queens Blvd didn't seem all that narrower than any other main drag anywhere. Way wider than Hollywood Blvd anyway at the heart. Forest Hills might be a comparison. There around Continental you have an active district, but just off it it's apartment buildings and then all single family homes beyond.
Queens Blvd is probably one of the widest roads in the city. It's also called the "Boulevard of Death" from its frequent pedestrian deaths. Speed limit has been lowered to 30 mph in attempt to make the road safer.
Agree with Queens being the closest match, posted examples before.
Queens Blvd is probably one of the widest roads in the city. It's also called the "Boulevard of Death" from its frequent pedestrian deaths. Speed limit has been lowered to 30 mph in attempt to make the road safer.
Agree with Queens being the closest match, posted examples before.
Wow, I, yikes, didn't notice any lower speeds! I agree there are more narrow residential streets, just like certain parts of L.A., but I didn't actually find much difference to commercial streets overall there. Francis Lewis, Astoria, Ditmars, Northern--they were like a lot of arteries in other cities to me. A lot of Queens actually felt like Eagle Rock.
Anyway, in truth were I ever to move to New York I'd move to Forest Hills, not Manhattan.
Thanks for the input. The streetcar suburb model of Hollywood is interesting, particularly in light of the fact that it's plausible that someone would live in DTLA and commute into Hollywood using the Metro Red Line.
I agree with uptown_urbanist that Hollywood Blvd looks different than Sunset/Santa Monica/Melrose. However, the latter are chock full of shopping, cultural, nightlife destinations - things usually associated with a downtown. This is why I wondered in my original post about when does a "main street" sort of area become more than that?
Is the phenomenon of a suburb becoming more urban to full blown urban a fairly normal evolutionary process? nei, thanks for the Flushing views. Would you say that the influx of the Chinese population urbanized the new Chinatown; or was it more a change in signage? The East San Gabriel Valley of LA County has had a huge influx of asian (primarily Chinese) immigration and has become less suburban with tons of new development, albeit in a more strip mall fashion. It's nothing like Hollywood but it's now a regional culinary destination.
LA's Koreatown might be another example, although portions, such as Wilshire Blvd. were pretty urban to start with (theaters, highrises, giant apartment buildings). I subscribe to the notion that Wilshire is a tendril of DTLA although the official border is around the 110 freeway. I don't know if some of the skyscrapers were newly built by Korean businesses or renamed, but there's a fair number of them. Again, like the new suburban Chinatowns, it's a foodie destination but with lots of late nightlife. Using the Hollywood example, Wilshire would be like Hollywood Blvd, while Olympic and Pico are somewhat analogous to Sunset/Santa Monica/Melrose. And, I think K-town is denser than Hollywood.
but because it's the cool and trendy thing to bash LA as one big suburb.
Yep, there is a lot of that going on, which is always funny to me. It's as if people have been ingrained to hate LA, because if you like LA, you're fake, uncultured, uneducated, etc.
But getting back to Hollywood, there is the whole Hollywood Hills area north of Hollywood Blvd which of course is full of mansions so this may give off the suburban vibe, but not in a middle class kind of way (simply put, you need boatloads of money to buy a house there). Next to Downtown, though, Hollywood (along the boulevards) is probably the most urban part of the area.
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