La is a wasted opportunity

[u/villehhulkkonen]

Imagine if Los Angeles was built like Barcelona. Dense 15 million people metropolis with great public transportation and walkability.

They wasted this perfect climate and perfect place for city by building a endless suburban sprawl.

[u/Different_Ad7655]

But it's still sprawled to make it really efficient without good mass transit. I live in New England and always thought that Los Angeles was the poster child of everything wrong until I started going there for extended stays during the winter. It's as you say you must pick your neighborhood. But unfortunately even in Hollywood, because it's largely single-family or two-story, you cannot have the density built into the area that you need for really good mass transit. But Hollywood is the place you want to be to downtown to Chinatown. I found that you still really need a car to get around although one year I was the only guy on a bike, yeah I never saw another biker in the winter. But if you're in the right place everything is relatively at hand and if the density build up increases then there will be better opportunities for mass transit and then that will make a lot of sense

[u/SparksWood71 → u/Different_Ad7655]

Los Angeles is building more subways right now than anywhere else in the country ;-) also keep in mind that even San Francisco is low density outside of downtown. The avenues look exactly like the picture above.

Edit: this is false, Hollywood and Koreatown are two of the most dense neighborhoods on the West Coast. It's very easy to live in Hollywood without a car, you can take the subway downtown, and the light rail all the way out to Santa Monica. With respect, if you don't live here, it just looks like you've visited once or twice in the last 30 years.

[u/PossibleElk5058 → u/SparksWood71]

The avenues has the largest city park in the country that shoots down the middle that everyone has access to as well as the beach at the end. There's light rail and busses there that are pretty snappy

[u/SparksWood71 → u/PossibleElk5058]

And? Almost every single home there is a single-family home. Griffith park, in the middle of Los Angeles, is four times the size of Golden Gate Park, and gets four times as many visitors a day.

[u/Different_Ad7655 → u/SparksWood71]

I know I know I'm there for 3 months a year. But the subways take you to far-flung areas and then you still have to hoof it for miles or use rideshare. That's not mass transit. Mass transit means you get within walking distance of your spot and that's the end of it. The city is too fucking large it's the problem

Koreatown is one of my favorite areas and if you're lucky enough to work right there or close enough and have a nice apartment or a house and one of those side streets then life could be golden indeed.

As I said it has its pockets, just its pockets.

I am not knocking the city, it is what it is. The US is what it is. And especially when you have been lucky enough to index yourself in 20 years ago with a house, what a deal. There is a small street, almost a forgotten the street off 3rd near koreatown where I always park and walk a mile or so to wherever I want to get there. This Little Street on the edge has 1920 houses and has one Spanish colonial revival beauty on an incredible half acre lot, unheard of downtown. I always dream about this house out probably 20 years ago was pretty cheap. The street is slightly beat up few homeless, and some garbage but overall would respond to cleaning. But it's the land of lala where you can grow anything or be outside at all times that by finding credible and to have that right there so close to everything else. LA is pretty cookie cutter everywhere with smallish lots. This is a real strange survivor and has a vacant city lot next to it as well as more buffer.. Just a fantasy lol. And has a classic back house as well for more income

[u/SparksWood71 → u/Different_Ad7655]

Far flung places ? Like downtown? Koreatown? Santa Monica? North Hollywood? with respect, I don't really think you know Los Angeles or what it's like for those of us who live here.

Cheers.

[u/Different_Ad7655 → u/SparksWood71]

Yeah yeah I'm sure I know the city as well as you lol But that's not my point. North Hollywood to Santa Monica is probably 23 mi lol. To downtown from Santa Monica is probably 16 mi.. But whatever. I have no idea what kind of experience you have where you have lived in a real walkable place but LA unfortunately will never be that.. It is what it is.. But if you're lucky enough to find your pocket and your spot it can be sweet, That was my only point..

The Subway only works in conjunction with something like rideshare at the other end. Unless you're extremely lucky but anyway I'll be there in a week

[u/beastwork → u/Different_Ad7655]

I don't know why people are in here trying to pretend that LA is not the epitome of urban sprawl. Yes certain parts or the city are walkable but that is far from the norm.

[u/SparksWood71 → u/beastwork]

There are worse cities in this country than Los Angeles for sprawl, Houston, Dallas, Phoenix. Los Angeles at least has a functional subway system and is building more subways than anywhere else in the country right now.

I'm not arguing that the region isn't sprawl Central, but you talk about the LA basin as if nothing has changed in the last 30 years is a pretty good indicator that you haven't been to the city in decades, or worse, you came here and stayed in Pomona or Riverside.

[u/beastwork → u/SparksWood71]

Your assumptions make you look like a tool, because you're dead wrong. But please continue telling me about myself. And what parts of LA I stay in.

[u/SparksWood71 → u/beastwork]

You sound angry.

[u/beastwork → u/SparksWood71]

And you sound stupid. Agree to disagreement

[u/SparksWood71 → u/beastwork]

Stupid is as stupid does. Speak English much?

[u/Different_Ad7655 → u/beastwork]

Because there's no American city that's walkable. None of them and I've lived in New York and Boston in the south end and all of them have 18th or 19th century cores that are now heavily gentrified and walkable, and that itself means different things to different people.

But when I lived in Boston my entire universe was 3 miles south end, across the river to Harvard square or downtown. But if you look beyond all of that to the ends of Brookline or West Roxbury or out towards Revere you're fucked as you are with every American city. Yes there's actually better options to take the train even to those places but if you have wherewithall You drive. So it's all about cherry picking neighborhoods everywhere and the East Coast cities probably especially Philadelphia as the largest potential area that you can get around easier want a bike or a train,. But that's contestable..

The point remains the same even LA has areas but I don't think we're you can easily live your entire life without a car and this is what walkable truly means to me. If you can go to work shop and do all the stuff you like to do either walking biking or easy offer to afford easy connection with a train then you're all set. . But there's nothing like Vienna in the US lol so all of this is kind of a just a pendantic exercise.. The US endorses, believes hook line and sinker in the car sprawl and continues to endorse it. I'm in Louisiana at the moment heading west and everywhere you look The infrastructure extends with absolute zero intent on controlling the growth.. The business model in the US is just fundamentally different everywhere..

[u/beastwork → u/Different_Ad7655]

False. I live in NYC and it's plenty walkable, I have no idea how you can say it isn't. I also lived in Boston. Brookline and Roxbury to be exact. Absolutely walkable. So either you didn't live in those cities or you have no clue what walkable means.

Neither of those cities compares to several European cities I've been too, but they get an A for walk ability, especially by American standards

[u/Different_Ad7655 → u/beastwork]

You're missing the point, parts of New York or walkable and New York is not the best example. I lived in New York too in Manhattan in Chelsea. America believes in and endorses sprawl. This is the part of the message you're missing. I'm not arguing that there are large sections of New York in particular that are livable and desirable to live without a car. But there's a huge part of the city too that you have to be dependent on a vehicle to get where you're going The father out you go.. Boston Brookline and Roxbury are exactly the gentrified neighborhoods that I'm talking about that are serviced but the father out you get you're fucked. I lived in the south end as well for years.

Once it was all serviceable by transit all of it, largely like a city like Vienna is or even Rome for that matter with a bus system. An America you fucked as I sit in the middle of Houston now, this is the poster child of the other direction

[u/beastwork → u/Different_Ad7655]

Wait...What part of New York isn't walkable? I live in Manhattan, I used to live in Brooklyn. I walk everywhere. You're just saying things that aren't true. My friend, obviously as you leave the city center the situation becomes less walkable. That's true everywhere on the planet. Walkability is a relative term, not absolute. Relative to NYC, LA is NOT walkable, you need a car because of inadequate public transpo.

[u/Different_Ad7655 → u/beastwork]

No it's not true everywhere on the planet lol There are cities that are efficiently designed to the outer edges and then there's villages in farmland beyond that. I'm not arguing that Manhattan in New York in general probably has the most efficient system in the US This is the worst place to be arguing that case but New York is an anomaly. We can just move over to Philadelphia it already we start seeing problems and in Boston, go beyond Newton or left or right when you're fucked. I get it I get it. America's older city chorus were designed with mass transit in mind but once you get to the development of the 1920s it's gone. If you move north or south of Boston you can't get anywhere but yet there are hundreds of thousands of people that live there that's the point. This is into remote village farmland setting that we're trying to get to sprawling sprawling the suburbs that's the point. You've been Long Island serviced by the railroad but good luck you on that track. Jesus he can't even get to the JFK with a direct route and that's a travesty

[u/beastwork → u/Different_Ad7655]

So i agree with what you're saying here. There are some cities that are very old and are naturally more walkable further out, and there are reasons for that which we both understand. What I don't understand is why you're saying LA is walkable relative to NY and some of those great European cities.