Quote:
Originally Posted by Docere
Bringing this back to the question of Great Lakes cities, it's interesting to some similarities between L.A. and Detroit: both boomed in the early to mid 20th century(Detroit was late for the North, L.A. was early for the Sunbelt)were early examples of auto-dominated, weak-transit cities.
http://www.urbanophile.com/2012/02/2...pete-saunders/
Of course they had very different economies and locations. |
Since you brought it up, yes, they both have a lot more in common than most people would think. But I would disagree about the weak transit characterization of both early L.A. and early 20th century Detroit. Both cities in the pre-war era were organized around sprawling street car systems. Detroit's was supposedly the largest in the world for a period of time. I think the Great Depression was the deciding factor in both cities not getting a pre-war subway system, which was probably solely a factor of their relatively late population booms. L.A. and Detroit were the only 2 of the 5 biggest cities in 1950 without one.
There is also a bit of community overlap. It's not that uncommon for people in the Detroit area to have family connections to L.A. My mother's family actually migrated to Detroit from L.A. post-war, but all of my mother's extended family still lives in southern California.