Quote:
Originally Posted by iheartthed
There is no San Francisco sized area in LA that has a similar level of walkability to SF.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by JManc
LA is like a very dense Houston but still very much car centric and the built environment is based around that. When I visit LA, a car is an absolute must whereas when I go into SF, I park and leave it.
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This has been my experience as well. First, the walkable neighborhoods are too far apart so a car is a must. In SF the walkable neighborhoods flow seamlessly into one another, obviating the need for a car.
And second and probably more important, the neighborhoods are not really on the same level in terms of peak urbanity. I can’t think of any LA equivalent Tenderloin, Chinatown, North Beach, Hayes Valley, Mission District, Haight-Ashbury, Alamo Square, Inner Richmond, Inner Sunset, etc where you have densely populated neighborhoods situated on top of and around busy and vibrant commercial corridors. Ktown probably comes the closest in terms of density and vibrancy but the built form is noticeably more auto centric. Then you have places like Sawtelle and Venice but they are far less densely populated and autocentric to a degree as well (at least Sawtelle).
Even if you cherry picked and cut the most urban LA neighborhoods and pasted them all around the periphery of downtown LA to form something contiguous the size of SF, I still don’t think it would create an area close to approaching the walkability of any of the top 6 cities.