The big difference between LA and pretty much the entire rest of the United States is that its spectacular postwar residential expansion was platted on prewar-sized lots.

Lot sizes in the United States worked roughly like this:
1800-1880 25x100
1880-1910 35x120
1910-1950 50x150
1950-2008 75x200

But in LA and Orange County, tens if not hundreds of thousands of postward SFH's were built on 40x80~ lots. Unfortunately, the main arterials are very wide, which reduced prevailing density, made it too easy to drive, and too depressing to walk.

The weird thing about walking anywhere in LA is that you get this weird sense for the relative slowness of walking that doesn't seem to exist anywhere in the east. I get this sense even around Fairfax, UCLA, etc., where the prevailing densities are quite high.

Probably bc much of the pedestrian experience is predicated on fine-grained urbanity. Large-lot developments are generally bad from the pedestrian perspective. And even in dense, walkable areas of LA, places like Westwood, Koreatown, Hollywood, there generally isn't a ton of fine grain. SF has fine grain, even when the density is same as LA, so is more pleasant at street level.

And the really wide, autocentric LA arterials aren't particularly pleasant for a stroll. How many people want to stroll down Pico Blvd?

Downtown SJ is very underwhelming relative to its size and economic importance of Silicon Valley, but that's mainly due to the spread out nature of tech campuses. They've always been in Redwood City (Oracle), Menlo Park (Sun Microsystems, now Facebook), Cupertino (Apple), Sunnyvale (Yahoo, AMD, Lockheed Martin), Mountain View (Google), Santa Clara (Intel), Los Gatos (Netflix) propers, or even North San Jose (Samsung, Cisco) outside of downtown. The only significant tech company in downtown SJ that I can think of is Adobe. Google will be expanding there shortly, but more to the edge of downtown, close to SAP Center where the Sharks play.

If all of the above companies had instead concentrated in downtown SJ I think we'd see a very different downtown today, even with the airport limitations.

Yep, that's a good observation, I've noticed that too. The walking speeds do tend to be slower in CA than NY. I have thought that the reason is that people in NY are walking to get somewhere by a certain time usually in weather conditions that aren't as nice as they are in SoCal, in contrast to the walking in CA cities where it is more of a casual scene, "I'm walking to enjoy the day on my way to brunch and then do some shopping". There is a big difference from that to "I'm speed walking to catch the X train to connect to the 3 rail to get to bus route 00 to be on time."

DTSJ has a height limit due to the proximity of the airport but there were a few highrises in construction or planned when i lived there. And there is plenty of construction going on though it seemed they were concentrated more in North San Jose to be closer to all the silicon valley campuses.

Ny? Chicago? Boston? Philly? Sure.

But he said ANYWHERE back east, which is where I'm from. Call bs on that. DC surburbs barely have any walkability, and even the ones they have, people aren't moving fast compared to california.

And that's just DC. NORTH CAROLINA? Are you kidding me? That's one of the slowest paced places ANYWHERE.

I could be wrong, but I think the "slow" comment was about how walking in LA often feels like moving through the city in slow motion. Everyone else--in their cars, trucks, buses, trains, and even on their bikes--is moving through the same place so much faster.

I really dont know what he's trying to say.

NYC and especially Manhattan, is in a league by itself for fast pace walking. Part of the reason is the sheer number of people walking, and the traffic and noise. No US city can really match the busy street scape, which can be quite exhausting at time for an introvert like myself. And some DC suburbs are very walkable, especially the Northern Virginia ones along the Orange Line, at stops along the Ballston- Rosslyn corridor. There are tons of apartments, condos, restaurants, retail and offices along that corridor, and real estate is quite expensive. The Maryland suburbs are a little behind, but some of the suburbs like Bethesda have prioritize walkability and dense development near their metro stops.

I used to work in Ballston and would go to Rosslyn, Crystal City etc often.
I found the pace pretty slow. You'd think with all the development it'd be some vibrant place and it just isnt.

Highrise apartments doesn't mean bustling. The most vibrant part of Arlington is where there's few highrises. Same for Alexandria.
Either way, I don't know see how those places are faster than LA.

I don't think 90,000 deaths over two years, which impacted mostly older people, has had a measurable impact on population growth in California.

This is similar to how I interpreted it. I thought he meant that the larger lot sizes means it takes longer to feel like you've gone a distance.

Will this help or make it worse...?

https://news.yahoo.com/california-pr...115448808.html

There should be no gas vehicles being sold new by 2035. So that isn't very aggressive legislation, IMO.

In Europe, gas/diesel vehicles are already in a death spiral, and are now outsold by electric. In five years, gas/diesel sales in Europe will probably be near zero.

If you're buying a gas vehicle today, it will probably be your last.

There is absolutely no way this can possibly be true.

E vehicles have been the #1 seller in Europe since December 2020:
https://www.cnet.com/roadshow/news/e...an%20countries.

The Model 3 is now the best-selling vehicle in Europe.

More important, if you look at long-term trends, diesel will be gone within about five years. Diesel had total market domination until about five years ago, and purchases have collapsed. And auto companies have basically halted any R&D on non-E vehicles, so the gas car you have now basically has everything it will never have.

EV sales have overtaken diesel sales in Europe, but not gasoline. Diesel cars are a fairly large market in Europe so this is not insignificant, but it will be a while before they overtake gasoline.

Well that isn't what you initially said, but yes, EV has indeed overtaken Diesel.

Right, I knew EV overtook Diesel, but EV sales are very far behind Gasoline sales in Europe

I'm not sure what all of you mean by "slow". Fast walking is not necessarily better as you are less inclined to enjoy the street scape and more likely to pushed, bumped, glared at, or cussed at by someone else in a rush. Just the fact that there is street life in a sprawling city like LA in quite few areas is a triumph. I actually think walkability may be increasing in LA from my last visit this March as downtown, neighborhoods near Hollywood/West Hollywood had many walkers. Many cities, especially some of the booming places, have hardly any street life - just cars driving from strip mall to strip mall, and to gated communities and single family houses. In some of those cities, you actually endanger your life if you try to walk in many places.

I may have read too much into his comment, but I thought the gist of it was that people can get places more quickly by foot in NY than LA.

I think it's fairly obvious why people walk faster in NYC than LA. Walking in NYC is a primary mode of transportation and not a leisure activity. If you compare NYC to any other city (globally) where walking is a primary mode of transportation, you'll see that people walk at similar speeds.

I think I know what you mean here, and it has nothing to do with the walking speed of people in LA. It's simply a nature of the sheer size of LA and how spread out the city is. Walking for two hours in a city like San Francisco can get you almost from one side of the city to the other. I recently had a lovely walk from Pac Heights down to the Ferry Building on the Embarcadero. Took a couple hours, and I passed through many distinct neighborhoods, points of interest, parks, etc. Never passed a freeway, and only had to cross one or two wide, busy streets, but traffic around me was never moving too fast.

Contrast that to LA where you can walk for a couple hours and more or less stay in the same area. The vehicular traffic is much more intense, and you're much more likely to encounter freeways. I could walk west from my place in Los Feliz, and after a couple hours still just be in the Hollywood area. Even if you're covering the same mileage, the city is so vast that it makes it feel like you're not really covering much ground.

This image helps show how huge LA is, and how walking there can feel somewhat futile compared to smaller, more compact cities. Looking at this, it's easy to see why this is. The entire city of Boston fits into the greater Downtown LA area!
https://archinect.imgix.net/uploads/...Cformat&w=1200

:previous:

Yes, Los Angeles' municipal boundaries cover a huge area. The length of Wilshire Boulevard is longer than the whole island of Manhattan.

Here's LA proper superimposed over Paris, with Paris proper being inside the Périphérique:
https://media.timeout.com/images/103481145/image.jpg

All the tourist sites within Paris proper are in a tiny area compared with Los Angeles; it's like no WONDER it's so easy to get around Paris by their Metro! It covers a tiny area. Central Paris to Versailles is like downtown LA to Culver City, yet when I first went to Paris, they made it out to be really far, hehe.

And now throw in LA COUNTY or the whole GREATER LA and it blows paris out the water and most cities./

Can you also overlay this map over Manhattan? Just out of curiosity. Manhattan is half the size of Paris proper I believe - so this would be even more pronounced with the same comparison.

Okay, but walking for two hours straight isn't what we mean when we talk about cities being 'walkable.' San Franciscans (and New Yorkers, Bostonians, etc.) living their ordinary daily lives simply do not walk for two hours straight to get somewhere essential. People in walkable cities almost always take a car, bus, train, taxi or Uber to cover that kind of distance, just like they would here in LA.

Yea, honestly. My commute to downtown Santa Monica with the expo line isn't that different than when I worked in downtown Chicago. Walk to a bus stop, take the train, walk to work etc.

I could walk longer in downtown Chicago but I'd have to go out of my daily routine to do it. Most people in downtown Chicago aren't wandering around the loop at lunch or rush hour. They're usually going straight home.

What should LA's real borders be? Sacramento has the same issue with unincorporated areas and LA's Sphere of Influence might be the true borders.

Also, a couple of hours and you're still in the same area?

It's what, 15-20 minutes to walk a city mile for most people? And yes, that's true for LA. I've done it.
So 6 miles.

The metro area could be described as LA County excluding the A.V., Ventura County along the 101 corridor west up until Ventura, Orange County down south to San Clemente, the I.E. up until Beaumont to the east and perhaps Riverside/Perris Valley to the south, excluding Victor Valley. About 17 million people across a wide area of sprawl, vast majority of which are dependent on auto-centric. There's a limit to how much sprawl can push outwards; usually, 60 min from nodal centers by car seems to be the limit. Because of this, despite large amounts of uninhabited land in the Inland Empire, the amount of actually useful developable land is running out in Southern California, since very few people in their right mind are going to do 2-hour 1-way commutes from the far fringes of the Inland Empire to Downtown LA or Orange County. Hence, slowing population growth in Southern California; Greater LA will likely break 20 million people in the next few decades, but that will probably be the upper limit as to how much it can grow while still being predominantly autocentric. Any future growth in the region will have to involve a radical reimagining in how the bulk of people in the region live and move, either in densifying the inner urban cores, or expanding rail networks to service more flung out areas more effectively.

^^^ “The Limits of Sprawl”

Would make to be a stunning urban documentary. Or melodrama.

I think even without the geographical constraints L.A. was going to soon approach the limit of being wieldy as a car centric metro. Is there another example of an auto centric metro area in the world even remotely close to L.A.'s size?

Houston or DFW will be larger than LA in urban surface area.

I agree, 60 minutes is nearing the upper limit that most people are willing to do, there are a lot of people in SoCal that will go even farther though. Another thing is, because we're multi nodal, you can live in sprawly Riverside County and commute to your job in North County SD, OC, parts of LA County in under an hour. North County SD residents can commute to parts of OC faster than they can to DTSD and John Wayne airport is sometimes easier to get to than SAN. The limitations to sprawl in Southern California has been mountain ranges and water resources/supply and the infrastructure to get that water to areas without water. It takes a lot of time and money to get all the infrastructure in place.

Carlsbad (north county SD) to Irvine (OC) is a 55 minute drive right now.
Perris (new sprawly-ville) to Irvine (OC), 55 minute drive.

But it is these areas of developable uninhabited land in the inland empire / Riverside County that is and has been the fastest growing area of Southern California. It grew last year, LA MSA shrank. There are freeways, MetroLink and Ontario Airport to serve the area that is filling up with new housing, shopping plazas and employment centers.

we still don't have 2020 UA data yet, but here's the 2010 data for the 10 largest US UAs in terms of land area:

New York: 8,936.0 sq. miles
Atlanta: 6,851.4 sq. miles
Chicago: 6,326.7 sq. miles
Los Angeles: 5,907.8 sq. miles
Philadelphia: 5,131.7 sq. miles
Boston: 4,852.2 sq. miles
Dallas: 4,607.9 sq. miles
Houston: 4,299.4 sq. miles
Detroit: 3,463.2 sq. miles
Washington: 3,423.3 sq. miles



and if you wanna combine the LA UA with the Riverside UA of 545.0 sq. miles (as californians typically insist), then you get a total land area of 6,452.8 sq. miles, putting LA/Riverside just ahead of chicagoland.

I'm thinking the UA is missing a lot of surface area of DFW? I agree with you that it's a better measurement in most other ways when trying to determine the size of a metro area though.

I meant L.A.'s size by population. At some point it becomes unwieldy to have that many people moving around in personal cars as a primary mode of transportation.

Metro LA is dense. Fast forward 50 years from now and Houston and DFW will fill in, not to LA type density but maybe closer to SD density.
The densest metro in the US in 2010.

LA UA population density: 6,174 people per square mile
NY: 5,318
SD: 4,037
Chicago: 3,524
Houston: 2,978
DFW: 2,878

Counterpoint: a metro area will eventually hit a limit on geographic size, but it will spawn new edge cities that feed off the region’s population. It will grow leapfrog style.

This is because some economic activities like logistics would have a different definition of what’s “close by” versus an office commuter. Also some might want to still be close enough to do a one-off meeting or a fun day trip even if they aren’t near enough to come in daily. Plus the mere presence of people creates jobs on the edge and people who do those jobs aren’t reliant on going into the urban core.

As it is now, in DFW the far north suburbs are actually more oriented around the Plano-Frisco corridor and have less to do with the CBD.

Likewise I’m sure that Riverside-San Bernardino are the true separate metro the census bureau recognizes them to be, though I’ve never visited these places.

I was meaning more the actual city borders as opposed to the metro, so something like East LA (unincorporated) and it being part of LA at some point.

"Fastest growing places (min. 25k) in California, 2000-2020:
1. Beaumont (366%)
2. Lincoln (344%)
3. Vineyard CDP (335%)
4. Elk Grove (194%)
5. El Dorado Hills CDP (181%)

Reverse:
1. Huntington Park (-11%)
2. Maywood (-10%)
3. Bell Gardens (-10%)
4. Bell (-8%)
5. Santa Ana (-8%)"



@SidKhurana3607

Not surprising about Elk Grove. It's a fast growing sprawling suburb of Sacramento. Lots of cheap housing there. Seems like a lot of people are moving there from the Bay Area.

I wonder if LA is due to geographical constraints; i.e., mountains on one end and the ocean on the other. Though the Bay Area (outside SF) is more sprawly despite similar geography. Much of Silicon Valley is like a Houston suburb.

The Bay is far more geographically constrained. It has giant bay (as wide as 12 miles in some areas) splitting it, resulting in two 2-4 mile wide strips of developable land, that eventually converges in the South Bay, so it's not really a good comparison geographically to the LA basin. If the Bay was entirely filled in and developed, then yeah maybe.

And while both do have the ocean and mountain ranges on either side, the Santa Cruz mountains take up a huge amount of space in the Peninsula, whereas in LA it's flat and sandy along the entire coastline, aside from a small area around Rancho Palos Verdes. So LA can sprawl from mountain literally up to the beach, whereas the Bay cannot. And then in the East Bay, there's the Diablo mountains. The Santa Cruz and Diablo range meet in Morgan Hill/Gilroy, and along with the Bay, basically allows for development to only occur in an area that resembles a claw shape. If you go for hikes along these ridges, you'll see that along with the Marin Headlands, part of the Norther Coast range, the ridgeline basically forms a ring around the Bay.

Similar in that they both have water and mountains hemming them in but yeah the Bay Area has the bay. I noticed that about Fremont; only five or so miles wide...mountains pretty close to the east and the smelly bay to the west.

Interestingly if you filled in the bay and overlaid the LA basin over it, it’d have a similar shape of development. Without the bay it’d probably look very similar overall. A giant sprawly basin.

So the fastest declining are all Hispanic suburbs. Obviously smaller household sizes due to greater immigration restrictions.

All the out of state folks say California is unaffordable, yet large swaths are.
My county is the most affordable in the entire state!

This also contributes to the Bay Area's traffic, as there are fewer alternate routes because of the Bay.

The LA basin has more alternate freeways and surface streets. Lakewood-Rosemead Blvd. can be a great alternate if there's an accident on the 605 or 710; Venice Blvd. can be a great alternate to the 10; Sepulveda or La Cienega to Slauson or La Tijera can be a good alternate to LAX... etc.