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LA and Houston also don’t really belong together LA Metro is #2 in overall ridership
LA isn’t your average Sunbelt sprawlville
It very much is sunbelt sprawlville… LA just reached a point I where it couldn’t geographically expand anymore and now has to densify to retain population, which is what we are seeing in the 21st century.
Beyond that you have tier 2: Chicago, SF, Philly, Boston, DC
2)Chicago is so much larger that is probably really deserves to be its own tier.
gap
3) SF,Phil,Bos are pretty closely bunched. Philly is the biggest, SF has the most active core.
4) DC is basically on par with SF, Philly, Bos. It has closed the gap a fair amount in the past 10-15 years. But, it still doesn't really have the mixed-use high intensity urban core the way the other do. It also doesn't quite hold its density to the same degree.
Then you have tier 3: Seattle is pretty unique nationally. It's basically a streetcar suburb vernacular city that has been urbanizing on an unprecedented scale. It is now firmly above more traditional urban cities like Baltimore or Pittsburgh and is developing a real active pedestrian culture that is hard to find outside the big 6 above. The commercial cores of places like U-District or Capitol Hill are basically on par with the tier 2 cities at this point. However, the city is still a ways from sustaining its density the way the other cities do.
Tier 4: LA and Miami- these are big nodal cities with reasonably high population densities. But, they don't really function like traditional urban cities.
Tier 5: Dallas, Houston, Atlanta- its really pretty hard to rank these. These are massive suburban economic regions. The urban cores are seeing massive infill and they are beginning to develop walkable pockets where car-lite living is possible. Atlanta is probably the furthest along if I had to guess. But, it is hard to imagine any of these being truly urban. But, they could develop like Miami or LA where you have walkable urban zones. These cities are economic juggernauts, but right much smaller places like Baltimore, Pittsburgh, Portland, Minneapolis, Denver or SD probably still have more walkable urban cores.
It seems to me a pretty simple proposition (or maybe not, if we start playing with metrics); the older the built environment, the higher up the urbanity scale you are. My thinking is that you divide them up as such: Cities that came into their own pre-1850, 1850-1945(end of WWII), and 1945-present. Doing such gives us something like this:
The Horse and Carraige Era:
Boston
Philadelphia
New York
Washington
The Railroad and Streetcar Era:
Chicago
San Francisco
The Automobile Era:
Atlanta
Dallas
Houston
Los Angeles
Miami
Seattle
Having said all that, it also seems the oldest cities have hit their 'urban plateau', while newer cities (all located in the Sunbelt save Seattle) are playing catchup at a rapid rate. With major shifts in population to the south and west, transplants (particularly the younger ones) are demanding the urban amenities that they were accustomed to at home. It's inevitable that sometime in the next 25-50 years the scale will even out.
That is a good way to sort them out. I would say, however, that of the Auto Age cities, Los Angeles is currently performing urbanity retrofits on a larger scale than any other city in its tier. Now, that may be a mere function of size — it's the second biggest city and urban area in the country — but proportionally speaking, it seems to me that the scale of LA's urbanity retrofit well exceeds that of what's being done in every one of the Automobile Era cities save Seattle.
And Joakim3's point about geographic constraints is a good one that IMO applies as much to Seattle as it does to LA. The Cascades and Puget Sound form as substantial a barrier to geographic expansion as the mountains ringing LA do. But I do have to issue a caveat here: LA has this knack for jumping over mountains if the developers think the residents will follow. We already have the San Fernando Valley as a mature example of this, and Lancaster and Palmdale are more recent ones. I'd say the presence of a couple of other constraints — San Bernardino to the east and Camp Pendleton to the south — form an even more formidable barrier than the topographic ones.
But one of the signs of the scope of the urbanity retrofit is the pace at which LA is restoring a lattice of rail transit lines to its built form. Rider advocates chafe at it, pointing out (rightly) that improving the speed of the buses will deliver greater improvement in the quality of transit service in LA for a much greater number of transit users than another rail transit line will, but — let's get real about this — rail transit isn't just, or maybe even fundamentally, about moving people from point A to point B. It's about making a different kind of built environment possible.
Quote:
Originally Posted by murksiderock
Seems to be near-unanimous agreement that the southern cities come in the last tier of this group of cities, am I reading this correct?
To that point, I agree. So there's a separate tier, potentially, of Houston, Dallas, Atlanta, Miami. To this I'll say, having never been to Houston or Miami, have been to Dallas and Atlanta, and while they are in the same class/range of urban scale----->Atlanta is a slight step ahead of Dallas. It feels grander, there are more people on the streets walking, more walkable nodes, the subways add an element of urbanity, and everywhere in Atlanta is comparably built up more than its Dallas parallels: Downtown Atlanta, Midtown Atlanta, Buckhead...
Ultimately again it's more on Dallas' scale of urbanity than the other cities but I want to point out that Texas cities in general (have been to Fort Worth and El Paso), they all seem to feel somewhat smaller than they actually are...
Hmmm. I wouldn't have said that about Houston, whose downtown skyline actually eclipses Philadelphia's. (I've been to all of those four cities except Atlanta, and I may visit that one soon.)
Quote:
Originally Posted by Joakim3
It very much is sunbelt sprawlville… LA just reached a point I where it couldn’t geographically expand anymore and now has to densify to retain population, which is what we are seeing in the 21st century.
Maybe more to the point, LA is emulating its Northeast peers in that it's been losing population since the onset of the COVID pandemic.
Also, regarding San Francisco's level of urban vitality and street activity: I think that until the tech bros return to the office buildings, we may have to knock it down a notch, to Philadelphia's level. From what I've read, the clearing out of office districts after the pandemic began hit San Francisco harder than most other cities with large downtown employment, and it seems that the tech firms aren't calling their employees back to the office even part-time as Comcast NBCUniversal has done in Philadelphia. Now, if that's beginning to change, that's a good sign for San Francisco. But I think I would have read stories to that effect by now if it were happening.
It very much is sunbelt sprawlville… LA just reached a point I where it couldn’t geographically expand anymore and now has to densify to retain population, which is what we are seeing in the 21st century.
I feel like LA is its own thing. It dramatically denser than a typical sunbelt sprawlville which really are mostly post-war urban sprawl with some new urbanist developments. LA is not a core oriented city like the more traditional urban cities where a big share of jobs and urban amenities are anchored downtown. But, it is extremely dense and has tons of walkable nodes throughout the basin. The median LA neighborhood is probably closer to the median Chicago neighborhood than the median Houston or Atlanta neighborhood.
Idk. I think many in this thread are discounting Los Angeles.
Yes, the city is mostly comprised of SFH. But they are all neatly gridded and scrunched together on very small lots. The city is extremely dense. It almost reaches such a supermassive size, that the density trips into urban category. Might not look urban, but it most certainly is.
When I think of a large dense city, LA comes to mind. It has multiple business centers/nodes. DTLA just isn't very touristy (versus, say, nearby Santa Monica+the beaches, or Hollywood Blvd+Rodeo Drive), I think that is what hurts it in the ranking. It underperforms in mass transit (but they are trying to build it out) and there has been a lot of infill in its downtown.
Maybe unpopular but I think LA pairs with SF, Philadelphia, Boston. LA is THE undisputed king of one-story housing urbanity. But unfortunately, it is the walkup, brownstone, packed-and-stacked/touching 2/3/4 story houses and pedestrian activity that really drives urbanity. Yet, what LA lacks in built form and centralization, it makes up in raw density.
I will go a little off the wall with LA and propose this ranking, as unpopular as it may be (and maybe I am giving LA far, far too much slack here):
1) New York
(Massive gap)
2) Chicago
3) Los Angeles (again, perhaps this is far too high)
4) San Francisco
5) Philadelphia
6) Washington
7) Boston
(Gap)
8) Seattle
9) Miami
10) Houston
11) Atlanta
12) Dallas
Here is an interesting question I posit: does urbanity, or the degree of urban form/structure/activity correlate in any way with the general, even random feeling of nostalgia, even second-hand, of a city? Sometimes I think of NYC throughout the decades, wondering what it must have been like, even though of course I was never there? Maybe there is a connection between our subconscious perceptions (nostalgia) and real world attributes (urban scale)? Maybe that's a bit farfetched, idk.
Based how it felt on long extended visits, and shorts visits, and having lived in two of them (LA & SF)
1) New York
(Huge gap)
2) Chicago
3) Los Angeles (when living in LA without a car and keeping your world small and walkable can make LA still feel so much smaller than how huge it really is)
4a) Washington DC, San Francisco (only SF itself feels dense and walkable, the rest of the Bay Area not, SF rarely feels any more dense than Brooklyn or many European cities)
4b) Boston, Philadelphia (Philly was a short visit so this maybe too high)
4c) Miami (don't forget Miami Beach's energy, walkability, density, and then you have downtown Miami and the rest of the Metro)
5) Dallas, Seattle, outside the core/city, Seattle feels small
6) Atlanta, Houston (My last visits were over 10 years ago, so I'm guessing Atlanta is a 5 now)
Idk. I think many in this thread are discounting Los Angeles.
Yes, the city is mostly comprised of SFH. But they are all neatly gridded and scrunched together on very small lots. The city is extremely dense. It almost reaches such a supermassive size, that the density trips into urban category. Might not look urban, but it most certainly is.
When I think of a large dense city, LA comes to mind. It has multiple business centers/nodes. DTLA just isn't very touristy (versus, say, nearby Santa Monica+the beaches, or Hollywood Blvd+Rodeo Drive), I think that is what hurts it in the ranking. It underperforms in mass transit (but they are trying to build it out) and there has been a lot of infill in its downtown.
Maybe unpopular but I think LA pairs with SF, Philadelphia, Boston. LA is THE undisputed king of one-story housing urbanity. But unfortunately, it is the walkup, brownstone, packed-and-stacked/touching 2/3/4 story houses and pedestrian activity that really drives urbanity. Yet, what LA lacks in built form and centralization, it makes up in raw density.
I will go a little off the wall with LA and propose this ranking, as unpopular as it may be (and maybe I am giving LA far, far too much slack here):
1) New York
(Massive gap)
2) Chicago
3) Los Angeles (again, perhaps this is far too high)
4) San Francisco
5) Philadelphia
6) Washington
7) Boston
(Gap)
8) Seattle
9) Miami
10) Houston
11) Atlanta
12) Dallas
Here is an interesting question I posit: does urbanity, or the degree of urban form/structure/activity correlate in any way with the general, even random feeling of nostalgia, even second-hand, of a city? Sometimes I think of NYC throughout the decades, wondering what it must have been like, even though of course I was never there? Maybe there is a connection between our subconscious perceptions (nostalgia) and real world attributes (urban scale)? Maybe that's a bit farfetched, idk.
Los Angeles is getting shorted big time in this thread...
South Central LA alone has around ~820,000 residents in 51.4 mi²; Central LA alone has around ~915,000 residents in 57.9 mi². These two areas viewed separately, swallow up the geography and density of SF, Boston, Seattle, Miami, and DC. These two areas combined, abd for those unfamiliar, they are adjacent to one another, have as of '22 estimates, have a population of 1,735,175 people in 109.2 mi²----->this is more people than the entire city of Philadelphia, in about 25 fewer square miles...
Los Angeles can reach Chicago's equivalent geography of ~228 mi², with portions of South, Central, East, and West LA's, and reach a population of 2,584,650. Which gives it nearly equivalent residential density to Chicago...
LA is so much larger than all of these cities, and swallow all of them up, so I don't agree that any of them are of a higher urban scale than LA. I think the advantage these other cities have in transit infrastructure, trades off that LA has fewer dead zones/urban prairies. Built form is a wash to me, because while all these other cities appear more vertical, clearly LA is putting more people within the same geographic land area that any of these places besides Chicago, which according to latest estimates, is only about 80,000 short in the same geography...
That's what the data says. I just left LA the week before last, obviously transit share isn't quite what it is in these cities with more established and older systems, but you can clearly see packed trains and heavy pedestrian activity in LA neighborhoods. It FEELS big, there's people everywhere. I've never been to Chicago or Philadelphia to give my anecdotes but I've been to the rest if these cities, these other places don't feel more urban than LA. They all feel small in comparison, which is a major factor in urban scale, size. The built form of these cities just looks different, to me it doesn't add a more urban imposition, especially when you know these places are holding fewer people than LA does in the exact same geography...
If it's just me, the only city I'd say possibly is in a tier if urban scale over LA would be Chicago, and it's hanging by a thread, but it's the only city with more people than LA in equivalent geography...
At worst LA is the same urban scale as SF, Philly, Boston, DC. But I'd make the argument it's on a higher scale because if how much larger it is than all of them, maintaining high urban form for much longer than all of them. So I'd go:
I. NY
II. Chi, LA
III. (any order)SF, Philly, Boston, DC
IV. (any order)Seattle, Miami, ATL, Htx, Dtx
That 3rd tier, I've never noticed any strong distance in scale between any of those cities, they are all of the same scale, a scale below LA. That 4th tier, I would assume Seattle just isn't yet large enough to put in the tier above it, so it more compares to the cities in tier, though the next round of this series will leave room to separate it out...
Los Angeles is getting shorted big time in this thread...
South Central LA alone has around ~820,000 residents in 51.4 mi²; Central LA alone has around ~915,000 residents in 57.9 mi². These two areas viewed separately, swallow up the geography and density of SF, Boston, Seattle, Miami, and DC. These two areas combined, abd for those unfamiliar, they are adjacent to one another, have as of '22 estimates, have a population of 1,735,175 people in 109.2 mi²----->this is more people than the entire city of Philadelphia, in about 25 fewer square miles...
Los Angeles can reach Chicago's equivalent geography of ~228 mi², with portions of South, Central, East, and West LA's, and reach a population of 2,584,650. Which gives it nearly equivalent residential density to Chicago...
LA is so much larger than all of these cities, and swallow all of them up, so I don't agree that any of them are of a higher urban scale than LA. I think the advantage these other cities have in transit infrastructure, trades off that LA has fewer dead zones/urban prairies. Built form is a wash to me, because while all these other cities appear more vertical, clearly LA is putting more people within the same geographic land area that any of these places besides Chicago, which according to latest estimates, is only about 80,000 short in the same geography...
That's what the data says. I just left LA the week before last, obviously transit share isn't quite what it is in these cities with more established and older systems, but you can clearly see packed trains and heavy pedestrian activity in LA neighborhoods. It FEELS big, there's people everywhere. I've never been to Chicago or Philadelphia to give my anecdotes but I've been to the rest if these cities, these other places don't feel more urban than LA. They all feel small in comparison, which is a major factor in urban scale, size. The built form of these cities just looks different, to me it doesn't add a more urban imposition, especially when you know these places are holding fewer people than LA does in the exact same geography...
If it's just me, the only city I'd say possibly is in a tier if urban scale over LA would be Chicago, and it's hanging by a thread, but it's the only city with more people than LA in equivalent geography...
At worst LA is the same urban scale as SF, Philly, Boston, DC. But I'd make the argument it's on a higher scale because if how much larger it is than all of them, maintaining high urban form for much longer than all of them. So I'd go:
I. NY
II. Chi, LA
III. (any order)SF, Philly, Boston, DC
IV. (any order)Seattle, Miami, ATL, Htx, Dtx
That 3rd tier, I've never noticed any strong distance in scale between any of those cities, they are all of the same scale, a scale below LA. That 4th tier, I would assume Seattle just isn't yet large enough to put in the tier above it, so it more compares to the cities in tier, though the next round of this series will leave room to separate it out...
Something that goes ignored is Chicago vs the east cost has similar per capita issues.
Like the Boston metro has the same amount of pedestrian commuters as the Chicago metro. Despite being much smaller. Or DC, Chicago and LA are pretty much on top of each other in terms of transit ridership despite LA being 33% larger than Chicago which in turn is 33% larger than DC.
Pretty much all the arguments Chicagoans bring against LA is something a Bostonians or Washingtonian can bring against Chicago
I’m not understanding the logic of people putting Seattle in a category with Atlanta, Houston, and Dallas when it’s so clearly a tier higher. At least it should have its own tier between the sunbelt cities and the legacy cities.
I’m not understanding the logic of people putting Seattle in a category with Atlanta, Houston, and Dallas when it’s so clearly a tier higher. At least it should have its own tier between the sunbelt cities and the legacy cities.
Seattle is not a tier higher than these cities.
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