View Single Post
  #144  
Old Posted Jan 18, 2022, 4:22 PM
Quixote's Avatar
Quixote Quixote is offline
Inveterate Angeleno
 
Join Date: Apr 2006
Location: Los Angeles
Posts: 7,474
What percentage of the actual respective populations of the “Big Six” actually live totally car-free? Even NYC clearly has sections of more auto-oriented urbanism. Staten Island, a huge chunk of Queens, and decent-sized portions of Brooklyn and the Bronx all have homes with driveways.

SF represents less than 10% of the Bay Area population, and within those 46 square miles, only maybe 33% of it is what I would call ideally urban or unequivocally more conducive to pedestrians than automobiles.

Same goes for the other four. Half of the cities’ respective populations probably live “car-lite.”

LA’s a megalopolis of 18 million, but OC and IE are and will always be their own thing. Seems to me that if we can build a city to accommodate car-freedom for, say, 2-3 million Angelenos, then that would be enough to “shift” the culture of the city. DT alone could probably accommodate 450-500,000 or so car-free residents. East Hollywood, Hollywood, and West Hollywood could accommodate 300,000. Koreatown and Westlake (using Google Maps’ definition) together another 250-500,000. Throw in parts of South LA, the Fairfax District, Culver City, Palms, Santa Monica, North Hollywood, Van Nuys, Glendale, and Inglewood for good measure.

Is it that hard to envision? The challenges aren’t urban structure but infrastructure, smart planning, and political will.
__________________
“To tell a story is inescapably to take a moral stance.”

— Jerome Bruner
Reply With Quote