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For a suburb, SS is urban. It's not U Street urban but it passes the smell test. I agree that 16th Street's urbanity does fall off but it is still urban. It's on a grid and it has blocks and blocks of homes. It doesn't look desolate like most suburban areas. It just borders a huge park. Two blocks over, 14th Street and 13th Street are different.
It's a suburban part of the city. Just like Chestnut Hill is a suburban part of Philly. Or Laurelton is a suburban part of NYC.
When I say "urban," I mean the portions of the city that are truly live. That means you see people people running down the stairs of their brownstones (or leaving their buildings) to walk over to a bar, walking to the subway, catching cabs or dining at sidewalk cafes. You see lots of people outside walking to restaurants, jogging, walking home with iPod headphones plugged in, biking, etc. coming from every single direction. It's basically "like Manhattan" but at a far less intense level obviously and over a smaller footprint. You're not going to see that type of activity in Takoma. But in the "core," you see that type of thing in abundance.
Ridiculous. So you're trying to tell me a place that's 18 times smaller than LA is more urban than all of LA? I don't care if they have the French Quarter or Bourbon Street or Ray Charles or Jazz. You're really trying to say that LA has nothing comparable to the urban qualities of New Orleans?
From the air, LA looks humongous because it is. But if you delve deeper into the street scene, it doesn't come off as urban as some of the other cities mentioned because of the way it developed. If planners had to do it all over again, LA would be decidedly different. It reminds east coasters of our suburbs.
It's a suburban part of the city. Just like Chestnut Hill is a suburban part of Philly. Or Laurelton is a suburban part of NYC.
When I say "urban," I mean the portions of the city that are truly live. That means you see people people running down the stairs of their brownstones (or leaving their buildings) to walk over to a bar, walking to the subway, catching cabs or dining at sidewalk cafes. You see lots of people outside walking to restaurants, jogging, walking home with iPod headphones plugged in, biking, etc. coming from every single direction. It's basically "like Manhattan" but at a far less intense level obviously and over a smaller footprint. You're not going to see that type of activity in Takoma. But in the "core," you see that type of thing in abundance.
That's where we differ on what is urban versus suburban. To me, the built environs of a Shepard Park and how it functions in the city is not suburban. I have seen serene areas of Queens but I would not call it suburban like stretches of Rockville Pike. But I do understand what you are saying.
DC is 10,000 ppsm! Forget your tracts. LA is at 8,000.
Btw, for those of you who conveniently think population density means absolutely nothing, if that were true, I wouldn't get posts like this one, in thread after thread after. Why fight the obvious, if it's no big deal?
L.A. is much more dense than Washington D.C. If you go by weighted density (the average density a typical resident lives in) D.C. is less dense than LONG BEACH, CA an L.A. suburb 20 miles from downtown.
You think Walter Reed, Brightwood and Shepard Park aren't urban?
You didn't read what I wrote. I said that the areas east of Georgia Avenue (exception of Takoma) are decidedly more urban. That's essentially "Uptown." There's very much a street and pedestrian culture there. But that really applies to Brightwood more than Shepherd Park. Shepherd Park is more on the suburban side.
From the air, LA looks humongous because it is. But if you delve deeper into the street scene, it doesn't come off as urban as some of the other cities mentioned because of the way it developed. If planners had to do it all over again, LA would be decidedly different. It reminds east coasters of our suburbs.
That is where I have to disagree... how could it? LA's suburbs are more dense than the suburbs on the East Coast (or anywhere else in the US save Bay Area), and most everyone that lives in the LA area can see quite a difference between Lakewood and Hollywood. I just have a hard time seeing the similarities, other than on a very superficial level.
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