What Michael O'Hare said. Let me just add that one thing which surprised me when I went to LA was the extent to which substantial portions of the city were actually much higher-density than I'd anticipated. I assume that at some point in LA's development the whole city really was low-density sprawl. It's also true that if you compare LA to New York City, it's all low-density. But a lot of LA looked quite a bit denser than Washington, DC; just laid-out differently and without reasonable transit options.
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Mass Transit
25 May 2007 10:11 am
Comments (33)
The density in Pico-Union & Koreatown, for example, is 4 times the NYC avg.
Wikipedia on "Greater Los Angeles Area":
Los Angeles is in fact among the denser urban areas in the nation. The overall density of the city (municipality) of Los Angeles is low compared to some other large American cities (less than one-third the density of New York City, for instance). However, this figure is deceiving, in part because the region includes largely uninhabited areas such as parts of the Santa Monica Mountains; many of the city's suburban satellites have densities among the highest in the nation. The population density of the central area was more than 13,500 per square mile in 2000, higher than the city of Chicago.
Its subway/light rail system is expanding though still relatively small, and its commuter rail system is one of the largest in the country.
This is true. The Los Angeles MTA also just approved a rather substantial fare hike, as noted in today's Los Angeles Times.
It depends on what you mean by "metropolitan LA."
Are you including southern Orange County and/or western Riverside and San Bernardino Counties in that? One can drive from Palm Springs to the Pacific Ocean and never really be out of a true urban landscape (120 miles or so). It is expected that eventually the suburban buildup will reach Barstow along I-15 (for those unfamiliar with California that's about halfway to Las Vegas from downtown Los Angeles).
LA Proper south of the mountains to the Pacific Ocean looks a lot more like New York and San Francisco with somewhat less public transportation options. The farther you go from the city center it becomes one big sprawling blob.
The issue isn't that decent public transportation doesn't exist, but that the metropolitan area is so large that there's no decent public transportation option for those that live 60 miles (or more) away from downtown.
Was going to note that this is something Atrios has posted about occasionally -- more than once, I think, using an old streetcar map to show that much of the city's growth in fact took place along lines of mass transit, prior to the freeways of popular imagination. But I see he's just written something to that effect, apropos of this post.
Matt, remember that until the post-WWII era, car ownership was limited. (
You ought to get out more.
America is larger than Cambridge - Manhattan - DC.
Last year, (I think), the LA Times had a really stupid op-ed piece saying that LA was the most densely populated city in the country.
I believe the writer hung his hat on the idea that the greater LA basin has a higher density than the entire NY metro area which includes the farms of NJ and parts of the Catskill and Appliacian mountains.
However, in the op-ed piece, he said it wasn't a satistical trick.
I don't think it was a statistical trick. I think it was someone who can't read and doesn't understand numbers trying to make a point which was surprising. It was surprising because it was obviously false.
Having said all this.
LA needs a better mass transit system and it doesn't need subways and light rail. It needs buses and bus lanes
one point that the linked o'hare post makes but that i think gets lost in the density conversation -- see, for example, atrios' most recent post on the subject -- is the extent to which greater density equals less living space. in turn, this means that, if you have kids, they're going to have to get their entertainment outside the house, and, as they get older, outside of the immediate control of parents. in and of itself, this isn't necessarily a problem, but it can be a cause of significant worry for parents -- especially given how our media makes it seem like there's a child predator around every corner waiting to steal your kids.
or, put another way: "the terrorists want to kill your children, matt." (as bush jabs his index finger into matt lauer's chest)
i live in NYC and the super for our building lives in the south bronx. he's got a 14-year-old son who sits inside and plays video games all day. now, i grew up in the suburbs and have somewhat bought into the "video games and television are the cause of all societal ills" argument, so my immediate reaction was to ask why my super didn't get his kid outside more. he then informed me that he would rather the kid stayed inside all day in front of the tv than that he be out on the street getting into trouble.
the point is that greater density, as most commentators admit, means an entirely different way of life. environmentally, the benefits may be enormous, and may outweigh any other consideration. nevertheless, there is a social calculation as well, which might not necessarily be all positive.
Loser,
That's a completely different issue. Your assumption is simply that you're more apt to get in trouble outdoors in the city than you are in the suburbs. I don't think that follows from the different lifestyles of high-density and low-density living.
That being said, one of the reasons I enjoy living in high-density cities is that there are less kids and parents.
> in and of itself, this isn't necessarily a
> problem, but it can be a cause of significant
> worry for parents
Although I didn't grow up in an area as dense as Manhatten, it was dense enough, and in and of itself I see this as a great advantage that my urban generation had over the current suburban generations (note that I am a parent of teen(s)). Developing independence and judgment are good things; insulating and isolating tend to prevent these skills from developing.
Is there somewhat more risk? Yeah. As my drivers' ed teacher [ironic source for this topic eh?] said there is risk in every decision you make, including the decision to do nothing; managing the risk to get what you want out of life is the key.
Cranky
More backup information from Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_metropolitan_areas_by_population
The "metropolitan statistical areas" for NYC and LA actually have nearly the same population density. Obviously LA does not have Manhattan-like population density anywhere that is nearly Manhattan-sized. But the majority of LA is really not half-acre house suburban sprawl. It's 2-3 story city streets tens of miles in every direction.
This is a fantastic visual, comparing many of the world's subway systems at the same scale:
http://www.fakeisthenewreal.org/subway/
As you can see, LA and SF both do face the challenge of very large areas of population spread that make useful expansions of the subway systems very expensive. The practical strategy that it looks like both cities are following is to favor expansion along routes that are the most congested for cars. Eg, in SF the worst car congestion is always going to be on the bridges so the subway follows there, and in LA the most discussed subway expansion right now is a line going underneath Wilshire from downtown to the beach.
Of course, much of the problem absolutely does stem from insufficient forsight and ambition in city planning. At a certain point, we need to pay less attention to how to best service existing population islands and instead need to be proactive in building subway service where we can do so efficiently and expect that in the decades that follow city development will gravitate towards where the we built that service.
One last point about LA: we actually do have a fantastic bus system. Especially for the main city reagions bordered by highways (eg, Santa Monica, the big West Hollywood/Hollywood/Mid-Wilshire/K-Town area), where the major streets are essentially a grid, and buses arrive to go in any direction you want every few minutes. It's true that buses have few special privlegdes on the roads and so suffer from the same traffic that cars do.
But again the main problem is just area of service. People want to go from downtown to the airport to hollywood to long beach to the valley. Those are all 30-60 minute trips in a car, so even an efficient bus system is going to necessarily make those 60-120 minute trips.
There is hope, however. LA is definitly building vertically. The hot housing developments are higher lofts in hollywood, new apartment towers downtown, and stacked condo complexes everywhere else.
Check out "Fragmented Metropolis" by Robert Fogelson. His comprehensive urban history of L.A. shows how the city was built on an expansive streetcar network. Until WWII L.A. was a very dense city. Then car advocates aggressively dismantled the streetcar companies to make way for the automobile.
That history is real. "Who Framed Roger Rabbit" isn't, but part of the plot is based on this real history.
One last point about LA: we actually do have a fantastic bus system.
You actually expect me to get on a bus? You have no idea why they put them great big windows on the sides of buses, do you? One reason only, to humiliate the people of color who are reduced to riding on them.
One last point about LA: we actually do have a fantastic bus system.
It depends on what you mean by "we." Several municipalities have great bus systems, especially Santa Monica. When I lived on the Westside (Mar Vista) I could take the Big Blue Bus pretty much anywhere I wanted to go on the Westside for 75 cents each way.
But try getting from the Westside to the Valley -- you're talking about changing buses three times and taking up two hours of your day for a trip that would take you 30 minutes by car.
When I lived in Glendale and worked in Westwood, I would have loved to take public transportation, but there was literally nothing I could take that didn't require changing buses on a tight schedule that would have made me late to work every day.
The problem isn't with the city buses, it's that there are lots of little municipalities scattered inside Los Angeles proper that all have their own systems, and the systems refuse to overlap. Hell, you can't get from Burbank to Glendale without changing buses -- that's ridiculous!
"Your assumption is simply that you're more apt to get in trouble outdoors in the city than you are in the suburbs."
doubleB: actually, that's not my assumption at all. maybe you will, maybe you won't. as i said, my point is that "greater density...means an entirely different way of life" -- and not just insofar as it means you don't have to chauffeur your kids around. it also means, as cranky suggests, they'll likely be more independent and subject to less parental supervision. that can be a good thing. but, as my super's situation suggests, it can also be a cause for concern.
i guess another way of getting at what i'm trying to say is that it's easy for a guy like myself -- or atrios, for that matter -- who is married without kids to say that high density city life is "better" because we don't have to use a car. or, to quote the atrios post i linked to above, it allows us to "reduce the need for one car per driving age household member as well as removing the primary parental job description of 'chauffeur.'" but the other half of the chauffeur-coin is that you gain control over your kids. that's not an insignificant consideration, and it's a choice that the vast majority of young families seem to make in this country. or, as o'hare writes in the linked post: "My California students have a lot of trouble letting go of the idea that living on a half-acre in a house with two more bedrooms than occupants and a three-car garage is simply identical to fundamental happiness."
as you suggest, of course, this is a separate -- though not "completely separate" -- issue from the environmental question. but because we seem as a culture to have decided that the suburban lifestyle is somehow more conducive to raising a family, any advocacy of high-density development must address these quality-of-life concerns.
simply telling people that high-density living is better because it's better for the environment isn't going to convince a lot of people to change their behavior.
One substantial difference between our energy efficient rail-based transport options and our energy inefficient road-motor and air transport options is that road and airport infrastructure have substantially more access to 80/20 federal/local funding than rail, where the typical infrastructure funding formula is "you're on your own".
It also should be pointed out that the average number of parking places per car is closer to eight than to two ... there are parking spaces at home and parking spaces at the office and then a large number of parking spaces at shopping malls, restaurants, amusement parks, etc., each of which are sized for high demand periods rather than average periods, and for the most part included in the cost of using the facility whether you arrive by car, public transport, or cycle or walk in.
Yes, L.A. used to have the best streetcar system in the US until the tire, auto and oil industries conspired to dismantle it to their mutual benefit (to which they were found guilty of doing by the US Supreme Court but paid no price for their injustice). And now, despite decades of nimbyism, because of growing congestion, subways, light rail and commuter rail lines are expanding across southern california. Is this the only way forward? No. Must it continue, in conjunction with more dedicated bus lines, rapid busses, one way streets, smarter growth? Yes and it's inevitable. It's a shame, though, that it will be about 100 years from the dismantling of the original system before we're at the same place we were back in 1950 and at a cost of hundreds of billions of dollars and trillions of hours of wasted time and who knows how many deaths and injuries due to worse pollution.
Thank you tire, auto and oil industries!
This is going to be a very geekish comment.
Comparing different cities is difficult, because statistics are collected according to government jurisdictions, and systems of local government vary. I live in New York, and NYC - LA comparisons are very difficult to make.
The Census Bureau's quick facts site (http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/index.html) lists population statistics by state, county, and the larger cities and towns. New York City is comprised of five counties, the only place in the U.S. with this arrangement. Los Angeles County is made up of lots of different cities, and a not inconsiderable unincorporated area. New York County (Manhattan) is a subdivision of New York City. Los Angeles City is a subdivision of Los Angeles County.
As it happens, Los Angeles County and New York City have similar populations, 9.9 million estimated for LAC and 8.1 million for NYC. However, Los Angeles County covers a much bigger area, 4,060 square miles to New York City's 303 square miles. The area covered by Los Angeles County is more comparable to that covered by the entire NYC metropolitan area. Not surprisingly, Los Angeles County has a lower population density, 2,304 per square mile vs 24,603 per quare mile. The part of the County north of the San Gabriel Mountains is mostly desert.
Los Angeles City has a population of 7,846 people per square mile, but it is a pretty sprawling place itself, and includes alot of unpopulated mountainous territory. Neighborhood date is really needed for city to city comparisons. If you dig, you can get census block and zip code data off the Census Bureau website, and then amalgamate the zipcodes into neighborhoods. Its then possible to do neighborhood to neighborhood comparisons. Unfortunately, you need to have alot of time on your hands to do this. The quick facts section doesn't even seem to provide population density figures for the five boroughs.
Journalists either intentionally or unintentionally get lost by all of this, so you see things like most of Southern California compared to the five boroughs in terms of population. This stuff is difficult enough even if you are trying to get it correct.
Also, US central cities are remarkably NOT densely populated by international standards, New York again being the only exception. LA is more densely populated than average for a US city. I agree that the image of it being low density is badly out of date.
Right, the city of Los Angeles, which just hit 4 million in population, is much denser today than most people realize. There are very few parks (other than mountain areas like Griffith Park) and lot sizes, even in what are supposed to be suburban areas like the San Fernando Valley are small, such as 1/5th of an acre. In the poorer areas, the number of people living in what were built to be single family homes is quite high, with large extended families with multiple incomes bidding up the prices.
Unfortunately, LA is lacking the infrastructure to conveniently support a dense population, so you end up with the worst of both worlds. For example, many residential neighborhoods of the SF Valley lack sidewalks, sometimes even on main streets, so people tend to drive to the corner store.
The weather, however, is still wonderful, much better in fact than in the past because most of the smog is gone due to vast spending mandated by environmental laws (which worked).
I just read this yesterday, as a matter of fact, in a really fantastic book called The High Price of Free Parking (and which is sitting in front of me).
The Census Bureau defines an urbanized area as the "central city plus any adjacent contiguous area with a density of at least 1,000 persons per square mile". Using this definition, LA has the highest population density in the US, as of the year 2000 (7068 people/square mile, vs. NY, at 5309 people/square mile).
If you compare the City of Los Angeles to the City of New York (ie. the central city), the difference is pretty stark: LA has 7873 people/sq. mile vs NY's 26,430 people/sq. mile. This shows development in metropolitan LA to be remarkably consistent, whereas NY has a highly dense inner city centre with a sparsely sprawled outer area.
I really must reiterate what a great, and deeply revealing book it is, this The High Cost of Free Parking.
Everybody knows the LA subway should have gone from downtown along Wilshire Blvd. to the Pacific, but Westside liberal Democrats blocked its extension to keep poor minority folks out of their neighborhoods. So, it ended up being pretty useless.
Yeah, but LA's still a garbage town.
Yeah, but LA's still a garbage town.
In theory, L.A.'s bus system is "great." There are a ton of routes and if you believed the schedules that are printed up, you'd think the system was wonderful. But the dang things never come when they're supposed to and if you're unfortunate enough to have to transfer between buses on your journey, you will never, ever make the connection that you've planned out at the times they tell you.
And I say this from experience, I used to take the bus to and from work everyday. What is normally a 15-minute car ride used to take an hour journey (from one end of Hollywood to the other) on public transportation. That's why people don't take buses here. They just aren't convenient. Unless you are going in a straight line down one street from point A to point B: Forget it!
The Red Line train does rock, though, which is what I take now. I love it. And it seems that our current mayor "gets it," building up density around the subway stops. This won't help alleviate the traffic nightmare anytime soon, but at least it's a start.
Also, as I always rant and rave, the bus/train pass system in this system absolutely blows and it seems the system they're setting up to replace it doesn't work either. Wonderful.
LA's transit system is more energy efficient (read: well-utilized) than most other major cities in the US.
http://img364.imageshack.us/my.php?image=latransitefficiencymj0.png
I've seen your LA buses -- they get stuck going 50 miles per hour and then blow up! Great system indeed.
Mnemosyne: "But try getting from the Westside to the Valley -- you're talking about changing buses three times and taking up two hours of your day for a trip that would take you 30 minutes by car.
The only time of day you can get to the Valley from the Westside by car in 30 minutes is at 3:00 in the morning. The 405 and the 101 are absolute gridlock all day and all evening long from 7:00 a.m. until 9:00 p.m. unless you get really, really lucky.
The weather, however, is still wonderful, much better in fact than in the past because most of the smog is gone due to vast spending mandated by environmental laws (which worked).
I hate this myth. LA's weather is shit. Hot, dusty, smoggy all the time, no winds other than Santa Anas spreading massive fires. Smog used to be life-threatening, now it's merely horrible.
LA is a terrible city in pretty much every way imaginable. Disgusting, cheap architecture, no parks, violent, racist police, hackish politicians, no mass transit, to speak nothing of its laughable attempts at buying some culture (Disney Hall, the shitty collection at the Getty). I hate living here and am looking forward to the day I leave this dump for good.
wow, OH---you're just a little ray of sunshine. with your best interests at heart, allow me to say on behalf of reasonably happily angelenos across the southland that I hope you figure out how to amscray ASAP.
LA does have an excellent bus system on either side of mulholland (getting over the hill is a bitch, though), the subway's great, and you can---like I do---bicycle most places.
contra you, the winter weather here is phenomenal, the art deco architecure rocks, and griffith park is one of the largest urban parks in the US.
but don't allow me to weaken your resolve. as it stands now, looks like there's soon to be one less cliche-spouting, reductionist dipshit on the road.
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Comments closed June 08, 2007.
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Heads in the Sand
It's somewhat misleading to say that Los Angeles is without transit. Its subway/light rail system is expanding though still relatively small, and its commuter rail system is one of the largest in the country.
Posted by Peter | May 25, 2007 10:21 AM