Why did Downtown LA begin to revitalize so much later than other major US cities?

[SLO]

Originally Posted by badrunner

Yeah, as that video shows, it doesn't really spill over to the Historic Core. I saw a few homeless in the video, but no more than what you'd find in any busy street in a huge city. No tent cities, no one shooting up or shitting in the street. You'd have to actually venture into Skid Row (for some reason) to witness stuff like that. People with an agenda would have you believe that it's a zombie apocalypse out here. Most people never encounter homeless in their daily routine.

I get what you are saying, but I don't know about the bolded! LA's homeless are concentrated in areas, but you see homeless people all over the city even the west side, the beach cities etc...

[LosAngelesSportsFan]

Originally Posted by badrunner

Yeah, as that video shows, it doesn't really spill over to the Historic Core. I saw a few homeless in the video, but no more than what you'd find in any busy street in a huge city. No tent cities, no one shooting up or shitting in the street. You'd have to actually venture into Skid Row (for some reason) to witness stuff like that. People with an agenda would have you believe that it's a zombie apocalypse out here. Most people never encounter homeless in their daily routine.

That was true 5 years ago, not anymore unfortunately. Tent cities at 3rd and main, next to city hall, all around Olvera street, at every underpass from the valley to the Westside, along the freeways, at echo Park and on and on.. Thank you prop 47, prop 57, ab 109, the ACLU, LAcan, 9th circuit Court, lack of mental health care, lanterman act, homeless advocates and a spineless mayor

[badrunner]

Originally Posted by SLO

I get what you are saying, but I don't know about the bolded! LA's homeless are concentrated in areas, but you see homeless people all over the city even the west side, the beach cities etc...

I'll admit that you're much more likely to see homeless if you live in the core areas or take public transit everyday, but most people live in the suburbs, driving to and from work which is also usually in a suburb. I certainly don't see any tent cities or public defecation on a daily basis, nothing really objectionable like that - the things that people complain about as if they run into it everyday, like really? What kind of commute do you guys have? lol.

There are no tent cities anywhere near where I live. I know some street corners nearby where homeless people sometimes hang out, so they must be around somewhere. What's weird are those people who kind of blend in, like they could be homeless but you just never know, like the dude in the video at 4:45 with the sign that says "lost weed to several small fires" . Is that dude homeless? Probably, but I like to give the benefit of the doubt. So yeah, I honestly don't run into homeless people everyday, although it wouldn't be hard to find them if I went looking.

[Quixote]

Originally Posted by LA21st

Most Anglenos have zero reason to go into Skid Row. It borders the historic core and Little Tokyo/Arts District but Skid Row itself? No. Some people outside of LA pretend/act like it's something we have to deal with on a daily or weekly basis. It sucks its there, but it's not hurting the development around it.

This completely glosses over the bigger point and is a bit insensitive/tone deaf IMO.

[badrunner]

Originally Posted by LosAngelesSportsFan

That was true 5 years ago, not anymore unfortunately. Tent cities at 3rd and main, next to city hall, all around Olvera street, at every underpass from the valley to the Westside, along the freeways, at echo Park and on and on.. Thank you prop 47, prop 57, ab 109, the ACLU, LAcan, 9th circuit Court, lack of mental health care, lanterman act, homeless advocates and a spineless mayor

I think there's going to be a major effort to clean up the problem for the 2028 olympics. There's definitely been an uptick in the homeless population since the recession in 2008, even as the city has continued to boom. I don't have to deal with it everyday but I've definitely noticed it around the city. I take the long view and see it as a transient economic phenomenon that will pass.

[SLO]

Originally Posted by badrunner

I'll admit that you're much more likely to see homeless if you live in the core areas or take public transit everyday, but most people live in the suburbs, driving to and from work which is also usually in a suburb. I certainly don't see any tent cities or public defecation on a daily basis, nothing really objectionable like that - the things that people complain about as if they run into it everyday, like really? What kind of commute do you guys have? lol.

There are no tent cities anywhere near where I live. I know some street corners nearby where homeless people sometimes hang out, so they must be around somewhere. What's weird are those people who kind of blend in, like they could be homeless but you just never know, like the dude in the video at 4:45 with the sign that says "lost weed to several small fires" . Is that dude homeless? Probably, but I like to give the benefit of the doubt. So yeah, I honestly don't run into homeless people everyday, although it wouldn't be hard to find them if I went looking.

I'm not sure you'd want to say, but the question is exactly where you live. Because even nicer suburbs will have homeless pandhandlers on freeway off ramps or hanging around the convenience store. I'm having trouble thinking of a suburb you wouldn't see any homeless. Not saying its tent city, but as I mentioned above...

[badrunner]

I'm in the south bay, and there isn't a huge homeless problem here, just the occasional pandhandler at the bus stop or freeway onramp. Even those are kind of rare. What you're likely to see on a daily basis depends highly on your local laws and ordinances. It's a patchwork of cities here all with their own approach to the problem. The city of LA is probably the local municipality with the most laissez faire attitude towards the homeless population. Other cities around the metro are quite hostile to them, basically making it illegal to sleep outside, which doesn't solve the problem but just pushes it to a neighboring area. Some cities have been accused of arresting and dumping their homeless in Skid Row. Kind of like throwing your garbage into your neighbors yard. There's a lot of drama and controversy about this kind of stuff locally. However they may do it, some cities are very effective at combating the issue. I also spend a lot of time in Orange county and there are huge swathes of that area where you never see any homeless. If they're around, they're well hidden. I can tell you a lot of people down there are blissfully unaware of the problem.

You have to be cognizant of selection bias when it comes to stuff like this. This is an urban enthusiast forum with an overrepresentation of people living in dense urban areas and/or taking public transit everyday, which is not really the norm in SoCal. Or they have a tourist view of the cities they visit and make assumptions about the entire metro based on the few hotspots they've seen. There are millions of people who just live normal boring lives in manicured suburban subdivisions, driving to work to their suburban business parks, never seeing an iota of urban grit and grime in their daily lives. So it's a true statement about most people actually living here not encountering homeless daily. Of course, YMMV.

[citywatch]

Originally Posted by LosAngelesSportsFan

That was true 5 years ago, not anymore unfortunately. Tent cities at 3rd and main, next to city hall, all around Olvera street, at every underpass from the valley to the Westside, along the freeways, at echo Park and on and on.. Thank you prop 47, prop 57, ab 109, the ACLU, LAcan, 9th circuit Court, lack of mental health care, lanterman act, homeless advocates and a spineless mayor

I walked from olvera st to the civic ctr several wks ago and, yep, there where homeless tents along the overpass of the fwy.

I drove from dt towards the USC area around summer of last yr and noticed squatters all over the place, particularly around the underpasses of fwys.

that never existed...at least to such a huge degree...over 10 to 20 yrs ago. Definitely not when bunker hill was still a rundown part of dtla.

so although some aspects of LA are better today, other aspects are worse.


• Video Link

[badrunner]

Speaking of Orange county, when you're down there sometimes it feels like the problems of the city are a world away, literally disappearing below the horizon from the curvature of the earth.

It's also another picture that answers OP's question. People focus on the nearby nodes like Hollywood, Century City and Santa Monica, but the Irvine Business Complex is a massive secondary CBD in its own right, 40 miles away from DTLA, pulling away businesses and development. LA doesn't try to cram all of its class A office space into a confined area, and the city is better for it, even if downtown suffers a bit.


c 025 by moondoggie71, on Flickr

[badrunner]

Originally Posted by citywatch

I walked from olvera st to the civic ctr several wks ago and, yep, there where homeless tents along the overpass of the fwy.

I drove from dt towards the USC area around summer of last yr and noticed squatters all over the place, particularly around the underpasses of fwys.

that never existed...at least to such a huge degree...over 10 to 20 yrs ago. Definitely not when bunker hill was still a rundown part of dtla.

so although some aspects of LA are better today, other aspects are worse.

Bunker Hill again? lol. Just out of curiousity, what part of DTLA do you live in, and overall, how do you like it?

[LA21st]

Originally Posted by badrunner

Speaking of Orange county, when you're down there sometimes it feels like the problems of the city are a world away, literally disappearing below the horizon from the curvature of the earth.

It's also another picture that answers OP's question. People focus on the nearby nodes like Hollywood, Century City and Santa Monica, but the Irvine Business Complex is a massive secondary CBD in its own right, 40 miles away from DTLA, pulling away businesses and development. LA doesn't try to cram all of its class A office space into a confined area, and the city is better for it, even if downtown suffers a bit.


c 025 by moondoggie71, on Flickr

Irvine rarely gets mentioned with other edge cities on these forums for some reason, but it's probably bigger than most. I'd guess there's almost 50 10-20 story office highrises there,plus new hotels, condos etc. And then countlesss 5-10 story offices.
There's two different employment centers within it-the Irvine Spectrum and the Irvine Business complex.
That whole Costa Mesa-South Santa Ana-Irvine -Newport Center-Lake Forest region is a massive employment center. It probably rivals West LA for office space.

[edale]

I know that the whole 'West Side supplanting the traditional core' narrative is one that's fairly unique in the American urban context, and definitely helps to explain why DTLA declined and has been slow to revitalize compared to other cities. Some of these other arguments presented here have me a little suspicious, though.

Like the claim about other neighborhoods revitalizing, thus limiting rate of improvement Downtown. Loads of other cities have/had this same exact situation while also having booming downtowns. Chicago, probably the best example of a core-focused city- has been revitalizing huge swaths of the north and northwest sides of the city, while center city continues to boom at a scale many times greater than LA. Most cities have neighborhoods that are revitalizing concurrently to their downtowns.

Also, every metro area has large employment hubs in the suburban communities. Again, having dual downtowns within the same city (Century City and DTLA) is pretty unique, and I can really only think of Clayton and STL as being similar. But every city in the country has places like Irvine and what not. DC has scores of these types of suburban office hubs, same with NYC, Detroit, Chicago, SF....literally everywhere. Why would Orange County and its office market have more of an impact on DTLA than say Tysons would have on DC or Silicon Valley would have on DT SF? In a metro of nearly 20 million people, there obviously is a need for multiple office centers. Orange County has over 3 million people alone- roughly equal to the entire metro area of San Diego. Of course it's going to have a lot of employment.

[LA21st]

Cause it's not the same and la just has more of it. It's not really debatable. What other big city has to compete with a Anaheim in it's metro? Then you have long beach, Newport and Laguna, Pasadena, Glendale, Irvine area on top of the usual santa Monica , Beverly hills, wrst Hollywood etc etc...
I'm from Chicago and return once a year. It's not the same.
I don't even think there's a Glendale comparison in Chicago suburbs. It's a unique area and just like Chicago is great being centralized, la is great in the opposite way

.
And there's only a few places as big as Irvine in the country. They're not everywhere.
Tysons is one, Reston/Herndon for DC (but not bigger).
Maybe 5, 10 tops.
And those places don't have a huge University either.

[The North One]

Originally Posted by badrunner

It's also another picture that answers OP's question. People focus on the nearby nodes like Hollywood, Century City and Santa Monica, but the Irvine Business Complex is a massive secondary CBD in its own right, 40 miles away from DTLA, pulling away businesses and development. LA doesn't try to cram all of its class A office space into a confined area, and the city is better for it, even if downtown suffers a bit.

There is no city on earth that's better off with decentralized office parks and sprawl literally sucking the life from it. What an absurd sentiment.

[badrunner]

Originally Posted by LA21st

Cause it's not the same and la just has more of it. It's not really debatable. What other big city has to compete with a Anaheim in it's metro?/
I'm from Chicago and return once a year. It's not the same.

La has always had more "activity centers "
Than any other city outside of NYC metro.
Because it's not centralized.
.
And there's only a few places as big as Irvine in the country. They're not everywhere.
Tysons is one, Reston/Herndon for DC (but not bigger).
Maybe 5, 10 tops.

Yeah and those places aren't as far away from the core as Irvine. People can always point to other secondary nodes that no one's ever heard of in other cities all they want, but it's really a matter of degree. Is there any argument that LA isn't the most multi-nodal metro in the country by far? Even SF, which I'd argue is a distant second in multi-nodality, has its most desirable residential area, most desirable shopping area and most desirable nightlife area all pretty much within the core, in SF proper. In LA those would be spread out over a massive area with multiple contenders vying for each category, with nobody agreeing to anything. None would be in DTLA. And to bring it back to an earlier argument, from the turn of the 20th century all the way to the 20s and 30s, downtown would have had the crown in two of those three categories, easily. It's not likely to ever get them back. There's just too much going on elsewhere.

[badrunner]

Originally Posted by The North One

There is no city on earth that's better off with decentralized office parks and sprawl literally sucking the life from it. What an absurd sentiment.

Except the entire sunbelt (fastest growing region in the country) has opted to follow the car-oriented multi-nodal sprawlburb (not really that sprawly) model , so it must be working out.

[mhays]

That only means it's expedient. There are externalized costs obviously, and long-term costs.

[badrunner]

It sure is expedient. Capitalism is an algorithm for maximizing capital efficiency. That's all it is. And there aren't too many ways you're going to create a catchment area of 15+ million people in a single employment market, while also providing a high standard of living. This is pretty much the American urban model going forward. Ever wonder just how American cities are able to achieve such high economic efficiency and productivity? Don't hate the player, hate the game.

[The North One]

Originally Posted by badrunner

Except the entire sunbelt (fastest growing region in the country) has opted to follow the car-oriented multi-nodal sprawlburb (not really that sprawly) model , so it must be working out.

It's not though when you just admitted that central/downtown LA suffered because of it.

LA has an extremely weak CBD, it's not even comparable to Chicago yet it's nearly double the size as a metro area. There is no causation growth that results from terrible urban planning which I'm sure you've noticed in that regard almost every sunbelt city is a pariah.

Just because these cities went through puberty during the post-war era does not mean their sprawl is working out great.

[badrunner]

Downtown suffered, but other places blossomed. Share the wealth bro.

And it's really not that sprawly. I mean, it looks like it from that picture with all the trees, but you're actually looking across 40 miles of the densest urban area in the country. It's completely solid. It realistically can't get that much denser over such a wide area, while maintaining a high standard of living.