Quote:
Originally Posted by JManc
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.
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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.