r/geography • u/villehhulkkonen • 1d ago

La is a wasted opportunity Discussion

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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.

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u/toxiccalienn 1d ago

Sadly like many other cities in the US, walk ability is an afterthought. I live in a moderately sized city (400k+) and walk ability is terrible half the streets don’t even have sidewalks

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u/DarthGabe2142 1d ago

NYC is probably the only major US city that has great walkability and decent public transportation.

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u/spaceenjoyer617 1d ago

I live in Boston and it’s pretty walkable

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u/CommentsOnOccasion 1d ago

All the east coast cities were colonies from hundreds of years before even electricity was conceived 

Los Angeles wasn’t really “colonized” with a substantial population until the railroads brought people west in large numbers, near the turn of the 20th century 

Los Angeles experienced rapid population growth at a time where land was widely available and automobiles were becoming more popular.  

It’s not really all that surprising that people for the next 40-50 years wanted their own plot of land away from the city center, now that they had automobiles to allow them to travel freely. 

Meanwhile Boston and New York and the whole Northeast had been the dense urban core of the country for literally centuries at this point.  And southern cities had been around for a while too, developed for hundreds of years when everyone was walking or using horses.  

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u/AdPsychological790 1d ago

Not just the East Coast cities. Even San Francisco’s mass transit and layout is better than LA. Why? It came into maturity almost 70yrs before LA due to the gold rush in the 1840s, not the 1940s. Southern California was cattle ranches until the late 1800s. But by the time it really exploded due to ww2, the car culture had already dug it’s fingers into S. California . SF was built like old world cities. LA was the original sunbelt sprawl city.

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u/stonecoldsoma 1d ago

LA surpassed San Francisco in population by the 1920 census, and was the 5th largest city in the US by the 1930 census. In terms of the city itself, the biggest jump in population occurred from 1900 to 1930. In other words, its rise came before car culture really took off post-WWII.

And it was the original sprawl city because of its extensive streetcar network, among if not the largest in the world at the time. *

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u/OhtaniStanMan 1d ago

You're the only one with a brain lol

If Europe city centers were developed and populated during the 60s and 70s it'd be the same way. People of the time wanted a yard and away from others. 

Nah it was big car and big oil preventing people from wanting something they didn't know they did.

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u/LearnedZephyr 21h ago

Many European cities were entirely leveled in the 40’s and rebuilt in the 50’s or 60’s. Some those cities chose car oriented development as they rebuilt. Amsterdam is an infamous example, but they course corrected over decades by making specific policy choices. All of which is to say, you don’t know what you’re talking about.

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u/Chad_Pringle 22h ago

This ignoring that many cities actively bulldozed neighborhoods and city centers in order to make room for wider roads and highways during the 50s and 60s.

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u/c_punter 1d ago

Bringing history and context into how cities develop is a downer man, you gotta let people who makes these posts feel better about themselves thru their ignorance, its the reddit way.

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u/nneeeeeeerds 1d ago

And southern cities had been around for a while too, developed for hundreds of years when everyone was walking or using horses.

Psh, they burned Atlanta to the ground, had a chance to start all over and STILL fucked it up!

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u/PossibleElk5058 1d ago

San Francisco the city was incorporated in 1850 and settled in 1776 not much further than Boston or NY. Point holds true minus the giant hills to climb.

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u/TheMillionthSteve 1d ago

Boston is great if you’re going in or out of Boston along a spoke. Getting from spoke to spoke (say, Malden Center to Harvard Square) via mass transit kind of sucks.

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u/wSkkHRZQy24K17buSceB 1d ago

It's really not that much slower than biking or driving. Plus, no time spent parking, and you can dick around on your phone the whole time, and it's cheap. Now that the slow zones have been removed, it is so much more convenient. I have been going to camberville a lot more.

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u/TheMillionthSteve 1d ago

(Much better with Eng overhauling the MBTA but it’s very much a hub and spoke style set-up)

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u/Badloss 1d ago

Eng is a legend and government needs more like him

He doesn't lie or bullshit about what's required, he tells you plainly that there will be closures and delays, they are required to fix X problem, and you will see Y positive results when they are completed

And then that actually happens! what a breath of fresh air

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u/Kayakular 1d ago

with literally picture perfect city planning that 2h walk would be 90min

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u/TheMillionthSteve 1d ago

When I lived in Malden I would have been happy if there were a way to do it by bike that didn’t put your life in mortal danger. Slightly better now but not by much

Philly - Chicago? Both those places I was carless. Boston? Nope.

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u/SpaceForceGuardian 1d ago

Where in Boston did you live? I have lived here for a total of over twenty years (with a six year break in San Francisco) and I have never felt like I needed a car. Of course, Ubers and Lyfts come in handy if it’s cold, raining, snowing or just a pain getting from point to point.
NYC is even more convenient, but kind of scary.

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u/TheMillionthSteve 1d ago

I neither work nor live in Boston proper now, and although I take the bus and commuter rail when I can, it is not conducive to most trips, but even when I lived in the south end and later in Malden I never biked (except for exercise on bike paths) because the roads and drivers are psychotic.

(The nice orderly grids of Chicago and Philly, I biked everywhere.)

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u/UMassTwitter 23h ago

I live in Hyde Park.

I need a car. Reality is 64% of households in Bsoton have a car. Its only convenient to be careless of you can live in a place where the rent is $3600. The rest of us need cars.

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u/holytriplem 1d ago

That's true for most centralised cities around the world though.

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u/occamai 1d ago

Arguably, Boston is truly more enjoyable without a car

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u/ReadinII 1d ago

New York is 100% more enjoyable without a car: nothing to argue about.

They need to start closing more streets to motor vehicles during certain parts of the week. Let service trucks make deliveries and pick up trash during the week and then close a bunch of street on the weekends.

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u/Jus-tee-nah 1d ago

absolutely not. esp with recent events a lot of us women don’t like taking the subways. i take ubers everywhere. and rich people take car service. so this will never happen.

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u/scarredMontana 1d ago edited 1d ago

i take ubers everywhere. and rich people take car service. so this will never happen.

You must be rich too if you're taking Ubers everywhere...

Joking, but I do understand the fear women have with the subway. A lot of my female friends voted for Adams just because of this...which was pretty frustrating at the time...and still is. Turns out white liberals flock to/love the police as much as Republicans.

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u/violent_cat_nap 1d ago

Lmao Ubers in nyc are terrible. The subway is fine

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u/LearnedZephyr 21h ago

You’re more likely to be hurt in a car crash.

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u/Just2LetYouKnow 1d ago

I don't live in NY so apply the tourist filter to this comment, but I have no idea how anyone drives in NY, that shit is insane.

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u/adultingftw 1d ago

I live in NYC and end up driving a lot (mostly in the outer boroughs). Cars and trucks park in the middle of major streets, so driving on "the wrong side" is common (and necessary). Cars don't for pedestrians at intersections, unmarked lanes, motorcycles and cars running red lights all the time ... it's really no surprise how many pedestrians die in car accidents here; safety just seems to be fairly low on the list of priorities when it comes to driving (behind aggressiveness, speed, etc.). New York could be a great city some day, but not if New Yorkers keep driving like this.

Sorry, rant over.

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u/scarredMontana 1d ago

It's literally a grid city so it's kinda super easy. Plus, during the day, most people are in the office so there's not insane crazy traffic. Now getting out of NYC...that's the horror.

In DC, they have diagonal roads crossing every which way and it gets confusing AF.

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u/Just2LetYouKnow 1d ago

Figuring out how to get around was simple, actually trying to drive anywhere was a madhouse.

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u/karma_the_sequel 1d ago

No question about it.

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u/UMassTwitter 23h ago

If you can afford to pay manhattan prices to live in Cambridge or south boston yes

But as a 30 year native who lived years without a car and years with one. This is a huge lie. Car all day.

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u/scarredMontana 1d ago

Boston is enjoyable?

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u/mamasilver 1d ago

Probably because british built?

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u/_lippykid 1d ago

British built? The Commissioners plan (the grid system) was introduced in 1811. The British (and Dutch) era was 1600-1700’s. Downtown, below 14th st, is pre-grid, but was largely laid out by the Dutch as New Amsterdam.

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u/mamasilver 1d ago

Gotcha. I have no idea. But Boston doesnt feel like an usual American city to me.

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u/An-Angel-Named-Billy 1d ago

The person responding to you is describing NYC btw so talking past you. But old Boston (the developed area pre revolutionary war) is pretty small geographically, mainly the North End neighborhood to Boston Common (old pasture lands). Most of central Boston is built on fill.

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u/IMovedYourCheese 1d ago

Downtown Boston, sure, but the whole thing is like 1 sq mile. Go a couple neighborhoods out in any direction and you will not be able to survive without a car.

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u/omygodifuckinhateyou 1d ago

Yeah but unfortunately, it's still boston

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u/knightblaze 1d ago

I like Boston a hell of lot more than NYC. I like DC better than both, the metro is absolutely great and you can walk pretty much anywhere

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u/AutoDefenestrator273 1d ago

The Metro is absolutely great until rush hour / single tracking / weekend / federal holidays / you need to get to Annandale, Georgetown, or pretty much anywhere outboard of the Beltway.

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u/robertbaccalierijr 1d ago

DC metro is great if you want one train every 20 minutes and don’t want to go anywhere after 10pm. NYC public transit supremacy forever

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u/IOnlyPlayAs-Brainiac 1d ago

what does this mean 😂 Boston is one of the best cities in the country. Good walkability, good food, good public transit, let alone the good sports teams

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u/colt707 1d ago

Little brother to the Yankees, enough talent that you should have multiple NBA final wins over the past decade but you got 1, Pats can look forward to another decade or so of Josh Allen kicking their teeth in, I don’t really know hockey so I’ll leave the bruins alone.

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u/IOnlyPlayAs-Brainiac 1d ago

and yet after all that, which city has the most championships since 2000? Boston by a mile with 13

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u/colt707 1d ago

Enjoy the fond memories because there’s not that many coming in the near future.

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u/maitai138 1d ago

Huh boston is superior to NYC lol, at least for me. It's not overwhelmingly tall

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u/dongasaurus 1d ago

major city