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/xCrispy_X 1d ago

The Barcelona metro is at most 5 million people. The LA metro area is 18 million people. Hell, the LA metro area contains like 35% of Spain's total population.

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u/El_Kneegro 1d ago

I visited Sweden this last summer, the LA metro area population is greater than the whole population of Sweden.

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u/PandiBong 1d ago

...so even more reason to invest in good, accessible public transport?

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u/El_Kneegro 12h ago

I was simply stating a fun fact. Not sure where the segue into public transportation infrastructure investment came from.

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u/deskcord 1d ago

I don't think people who scream "just build trains!" realize how geographically bizarre LA is. Ignoring the earthquake factor (which Tokyo has as well, of course), it's a very mountainous city and a large part of it is up and down the coast.

To sufficiently service Long Beach, Santa Monica, Redondo, Huntington, etc, you'd either need one ring line up and down the coast (adding additional points of connection rather than points that all flow from the sam place adds exponential complexity), or you'd need about a dozen branching lines - like the Green line in Boston but five times as complex.

That's all ignoring how you'd handle the mountains and protected areas getting to Pasadena, Glendale, the Valley, etc, etc, etc.

LA should have more trains, but this notion that it's some simple fix or even feasible across the entire city isn't really based on anything factual.

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u/Zoloch 1d ago

It doesn’t have anything to do with size. NYC metro area is bigger than LA’s and the core of it is very walkable with good public transport. London and Paris are very big as well and they are very walkable

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u/kellzone 20h ago

Only 10 of the 50 states in the US have a greater population than Los Angeles county.

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u/Metammetta 18h ago

Yes, LA metro area has about 3.5x the people of Barcelona's, but it also has 136x the land.