4 ms·

LA is actually very suitable for public transit: it's a city with multiple, reasonably dense urban centers. The greater LA as a whole is also pretty dense, dens

by erispoe 10y ago

LA is actually very suitable for public transit: it's a city with multiple, reasonably dense urban centers. The greater LA as a whole is also pretty dense, denser than NY metro area. And the city is investing like crazy in new transit infrastructure. Give it 20 years and, at least in the central parts of LA metro, it will be much more convenient to move by transit.

stevenleeg 10y ago
Could you provide a source which backs LA's metro area being denser than NYC's? I've yet to see any sort of metric (certainly not the US Census) that supports that claim.
- trome 10y ago
  Whenever I go to LA, it seems like an urban slum with no significant development of note (above 6 story) in most of LA. Its as though the land is worthless, even Oceanside has taller buildings than Long Beach or Riverside, and Oceanside is literally the middle of nowhere California! With that low density style of development, your not going to be able to justify a rail line that can move 20k people an hour, as there aren't enough people who can get to a station to feed it. I blame LA's zoning that keeps it as an urban slum. Dezone the city and you'd see areas around existing mass transit densify over the next decade.
  - midnightclubbed 10y ago
    Bit unfair to Oceanside there, we are closer to San Diego (or to Orange County) than Santa Monica is to Long Beach. Plus we are sat on the SoCal coast, not exactly middle of no-where...
    - trome 10y ago
      Its an hour from anywhere (about even time wise in my experience, whether heading to San Diego or Long Beach), has a beautiful coastline, but there is a gang war currently raging there and it is a rural small town, and that is how it operates (alongside the county gov't in North County). Hell, there was a murder last week not a block from where I walked daily when I was there a few weeks ago. Had a window get smashed there too a few months back. IMO, Seattle is safer (just gotta keep the crack heads from breaking my windows in Chinatown :P).
- lightedman 10y ago
  LA county alone has a higher population than 42 states in the Union.
  - maxerickson 10y ago
    Compare to Long Island which has ~70% of the population in about 1/3 of the area. If LA County is a metro area, I think Long Island is in the comparable NYC metro area.
- erispoe 10y ago
  Yes, the US Census supports that. See this table on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_urban_areas https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_urban_ar... This table is directly extracted from census data: http://www2.census.gov/geo/docs/reference/ua/ua_list_all.txt http://www2.census.gov/geo/docs/reference/ua/ua_list_all.txt
titzer 10y ago
> The greater LA as a whole is also pretty dense, denser than NY metro area. Sorry, this is not even close. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_by_population_density https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_b... There are many ranking areas in NYC in the top 25, and only a few from LA. NYC overall is ranked #6! Los Angeles doesn't even place in the top 130.
- jmchuster 10y ago
  You're not really looking at the right information there. Your top 5 cities are in single-digit km^2. For comparison, Yorkville, at 1.29 km^2, in the Upper East Side of Manhattan, has 60,349 persons/km^2.
- erispoe 10y ago
  I said greater LA, whereby, to be precise, I meant Los Angeles metro area. The density of LA metro is 2,702.5ppl/km2, compared to 2,053.6ppl/km2 for NY metro. LA metro is denser by a good margin. NY metro area includes a lot of very sparse suburbs. LA is mildly dense all over. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_urban_areas https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_urban_ar... http://www2.census.gov/geo/docs/reference/ua/ua_list_all.txt http://www2.census.gov/geo/docs/reference/ua/ua_list_all.txt

by erispoe 10y ago

stevenleeg 10y ago

Could you provide a source which backs LA's metro area being denser than NYC's? I've yet to see any sort of metric (certainly not the US Census) that supports that claim.

trome 10y ago
Whenever I go to LA, it seems like an urban slum with no significant development of note (above 6 story) in most of LA. Its as though the land is worthless, even Oceanside has taller buildings than Long Beach or Riverside, and Oceanside is literally the middle of nowhere California! With that low density style of development, your not going to be able to justify a rail line that can move 20k people an hour, as there aren't enough people who can get to a station to feed it. I blame LA's zoning that keeps it as an urban slum. Dezone the city and you'd see areas around existing mass transit densify over the next decade.
- midnightclubbed 10y ago
  Bit unfair to Oceanside there, we are closer to San Diego (or to Orange County) than Santa Monica is to Long Beach. Plus we are sat on the SoCal coast, not exactly middle of no-where...
  - trome 10y ago
    Its an hour from anywhere (about even time wise in my experience, whether heading to San Diego or Long Beach), has a beautiful coastline, but there is a gang war currently raging there and it is a rural small town, and that is how it operates (alongside the county gov't in North County). Hell, there was a murder last week not a block from where I walked daily when I was there a few weeks ago. Had a window get smashed there too a few months back. IMO, Seattle is safer (just gotta keep the crack heads from breaking my windows in Chinatown :P).
lightedman 10y ago
LA county alone has a higher population than 42 states in the Union.
- maxerickson 10y ago
  Compare to Long Island which has ~70% of the population in about 1/3 of the area. If LA County is a metro area, I think Long Island is in the comparable NYC metro area.
erispoe 10y ago
Yes, the US Census supports that. See this table on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_urban_areas https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_urban_ar... This table is directly extracted from census data: http://www2.census.gov/geo/docs/reference/ua/ua_list_all.txt http://www2.census.gov/geo/docs/reference/ua/ua_list_all.txt

titzer 10y ago

> The greater LA as a whole is also pretty dense, denser than NY metro area. Sorry, this is not even close. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_by_population_density https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_b... There are many ranking areas in NYC in the top 25, and only a few from LA. NYC overall is ranked #6! Los Angeles doesn't even place in the top 130.

jmchuster 10y ago
You're not really looking at the right information there. Your top 5 cities are in single-digit km^2. For comparison, Yorkville, at 1.29 km^2, in the Upper East Side of Manhattan, has 60,349 persons/km^2.
erispoe 10y ago
I said greater LA, whereby, to be precise, I meant Los Angeles metro area. The density of LA metro is 2,702.5ppl/km2, compared to 2,053.6ppl/km2 for NY metro. LA metro is denser by a good margin. NY metro area includes a lot of very sparse suburbs. LA is mildly dense all over. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_urban_areas https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_urban_ar... http://www2.census.gov/geo/docs/reference/ua/ua_list_all.txt http://www2.census.gov/geo/docs/reference/ua/ua_list_all.txt