95% of the developed land in the US is auto oriented suburbia. If that's the only thing you're looking at then yeah, I guess they're similar, despite Santa Clara having double the weighted population density.

The parts of SJ I visited and drove through felt like more upscale/richer versions of Westminster, Garden Grove, Santa Ana and Anaheim. Coastal OC (Newport, Corona, Laguna, San Juan Capistrano) is its own thing, not much of an equivalent to that anywhere, but when I lived in Orange County, the majority of my time was spent in inland OC for school and work (City of Orange, Tustin, Santa Ana and Irvine in particular).

Yeah, the comparison is more so inland OC. Maybe San Gabriel Valley too. The stretch from Monterey Park to Rowland Heights along the 60 reminds me of Cupertino and Saratoga. There's obviously nothing like coastal OC in Santa Clara County.

Half Moon Bay and Santa Cruz aren't even in Santa Clara County, for example ;)

Funny, I was thinking about comparisons to SG Valley (El Monte, Monterey Park and Azusa) but didn't say anything.

Hell, coastal Bay Area (are Pacific Grove and Monterey part of that?) is so different from coastal SoCal at least in my limited experiences with the Bay Area.

Hence my point lol. Most of the Bay Area looks like the rest of America... the northern portion of the SF peninsula being the exception.

This downtown seems pitiful for the largest city of 1 million in the center of the most US prosperous metro area:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Jo..._(cropped).jpg


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Jo..._(cropped).jpg

The San Jose airport has a lot to do with it.

https://c8.alamy.com/comp/AC301W/aer...101-AC301W.jpg

The airport is right next door to Downtown. I think its even closer than PHX is to Downtown Phoenix.

California cities have dense suburbia, which is quite different from suburban midwest cities. Western cities generally have dense sprawl compared to the midwest and east coast, which is why I said they have stark differences in look and feel. Suburbs are suburbs though, it's not like we're comparing Manhattan to Orange County, so I see what you're saying that they're both similar because they're both auto-oriented.

It is. You can literally wave at people in the Southwest window seats flying overhead while having a beer downtown.

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.