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Originally Posted by edale
Your ranting about the Cajon Ranch as evidence for LA not caring about environmental issues immediately comes to mind. Given that Cajon Ranch is much closer to Bakersfield than LA, that did a lot to discredit you in my opinion.
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You're one of those forumers - the kind who decides to discredit an opponent before reading the substance of his criticism, solely because his criticism targets something you hold dear and personal.
My comment re: Tejon Ranch is a prosecution of the conservative politics of LA where it concerns transit and sprawl. The Board of Supes voted in favor of expanding LA County sprawl, to the detriment of unspoiled, endangered, wild grasslands. Bakersfield has nothing to do with this, but your insistence of Kern County's relevance to a judgement passed near unanimously by elected LA County representatives testifies to your unwillinglesss to approach this with a clear, unbiased lens, as well as to your lack of informedness. More to my point, freeway widening is on for the 5 and 605 - let me remind you that this is LA in the year 2020, not 1993, and freeway widening is still being pursued and still politically popular. I think my greater point is, the question of how well a metro is urbanizing is tied to the question of policy and political environments. LA has not made much meaningful progress in urbanization because, despite the infill boom, it remains as car-dependant as it ever was. Things may be a little different in 25 years but, fundamentally speaking, the previous 25 have change little.
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Originally Posted by edale
There is no doubt that LA is changing pretty rapidly. Unlike the other sunbelt cities, LA isn't starting from scratch when it comes to urbanism. Atlanta, Phoenix, Charlotte, etc. have nothing that even remotely compares to the Historic Core.
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LA has a nice historic core, but don't catch yourself being one of those boosters whose entire premise is built on a "best foot forward" argument. The fact is, I already built my argument on top of objective data about the secular habits of the average angeleno: 4.7% transit prevalence, its translation into LA's horrible walkability, and the propagation of this horrible walkability via all the billions in wasted potential being spent in the current boom with no policy-guidance on how best to manifest all this money in built form. You choose to be excited about this vegas-style density and I, having spent time in genuine urbanity, vigorously beg to differ.
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Originally Posted by edale
With ... progressive planning policies that encourage TOD, LA will continue to become more and more urban.
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See my above post: Credit when its actually due. Planning policy and transit planning in LA lags smaller, often less dense cities like Seattle, SF, Portland, or even SLO in many respects. Outside of social equity issues, LA is not a progressive region. The debate over parking minimums has barely taken off, and it focuses solely on limited areas around DTLA, which is itself a drop in the urbanism bucket where more transformative regional change is concerned. Measures R and M aside (which are quite important), no discussion of more secular, fundamental, and widespread policies needed to drastically change urban living throughout the city and county is taking place in LA's halls of power, and the public could generally care less to force this issue at the voting booth. Angelenos are passive - we'll have to wait for urbanism-enabling effects of a built-out transit system decades from now for people to finally start getting it.
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Originally Posted by edale
Finally, in terms of the transit data that's been cited here a few times, I think it's interesting that the gap between the number of workers taking transit in SF and LA is only about 15,000 people. Yes, Los Angeles is a much larger city, but in terms of gross numbers, it stacks up pretty closely with DC, Philly, and SF.
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Yes in gross numbers. That's called "a stretch". I'm focused on the real-world, obviously. In gross numbers, LA can claim the highest transit ridership-density if you focus your lens on a single city-block. That's worthless though, as you're smart enough to realize.