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  #121  
Old Posted Feb 25, 2020, 3:53 AM
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Originally Posted by Steely Dan View Post
that's a really interesting point.

on the surface, downtown LA does seem to be somewhat randomly located within the greater LA metro area.

most other major cities seem to have their downtowns located at key geographical places within their regions, like manhattan island sitting in one of the greatest deep water harbors in the nation, or chicago's loop located where the chicago river meets lake michigan, or any number of interior cities with their downtowns situated upon high ground along a major river.

as a general rule, downtowns with something like a harbor, or major river, or bay, or lakefront, or some other major waterfront feature do seem to make for more natural meeting places.

is there a geographical basis for why downtown LA ended up where it did?

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"The Laws of the Indies was a book created by the Spanish to colonize the New World," Rojas says. "It's relevant to Los Angeles in that it placed L.A. where it's at today."

Issued in 1573 by King Phillip II, Laws is regarded as the first urban planning manual to reach the Americas. Previous and subsequent iterations of Laws codified municipal matters ranging from the existential to the essential to the mundane.

The 1512 version of Laws, for instance, mandated improved treatment of Native populations encountered by the Spanish. Suffice to say, these rules were not always followed locally nor well-enforced by a distant and oft-profiting Crown.**

So how does Los Angels as Long Beach fit into all this?

Because, as Rojas explains, the Laws of the Indies dictated that Spanish New World cities be constructed twenty miles from the sea ("to avoid any attacks from pirates," Rojas says), near a freshwater source ("the L.A. River") and close to a native tribe ("for labor").

That explains Olvera Street and its surroundings. This historic plaza core (or close enough, anyway) of El Pueblo de Nuestra Senora la Reina de Los Angeles de la Porciuncula - L.A.'s original name from 1781 - is situated thirty miles as the crow flies from the Santa Monica Bay and just a Zanja Madre away from the L.A River and similarly near the then-site of Yangna, the largest Tongva village.
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  #122  
Old Posted Feb 25, 2020, 4:46 AM
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Ironically...DTLA, and most of LA in general will be ideally located for the cataclysm that will be the rising oceans due to climate change. Most of the city sits well above mean sea level, with downtown far inland. When Manhattan, Miami, Boston, SD and Philly are planning sea walls to try and save their CBD's and most important real estate, Most of LA will out of the danger areas.
A tragic irony to the placement of LA within the region. Hopefully we manage to stop the catastrophe before it happens.
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  #123  
Old Posted Feb 25, 2020, 3:09 PM
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Uhh, well sea level rise still wont be all sunshine and roses for LA as the city sits on a major port and an increase in the ocean levels will be catastrophic for it's trade.
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  #124  
Old Posted Feb 25, 2020, 3:20 PM
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Originally Posted by The North One View Post
Uhh, well sea level rise still wont be all sunshine and roses for LA as the city sits on a major port and an increase in the ocean levels will be catastrophic for it's trade.
It will still be better off than NYC or Miami.
Those places will be destroyed.
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  #125  
Old Posted Feb 25, 2020, 3:26 PM
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Originally Posted by badrunner View Post
Downtown suffered, but other places blossomed. Share the wealth bro.
Sprawl is the literal opposite of spreading/sharing wealth, it's how wealth is kept behind barriers and segregated.

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And it's really not that sprawly. I mean, it looks like it from that picture with all the trees, but you're actually looking across 40 miles of the densest urban area in the country. It's completely solid. It realistically can't get that much denser over such a wide area, while maintaining a high standard of living.
You can't honestly believe this garbage. If LA had developed in any other country in the world it would look like Toronto or Melbourne. Not the planning mess it is now. Dense sprawl isn't anything to brag about if it's planned horribly. The whole point of density is to share resources and services more efficiently benefiting people. If planning doesn't allow that you don't have those benefits just the negative aspects of both sprawl and density which LA is notoriously known for (having mega highways but also crippling congestion as an example).
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  #126  
Old Posted Feb 25, 2020, 6:10 PM
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Originally Posted by LA21st View Post
Cause it's not the same and la just has more of it. It's not really debatable. What other big city has to compete with a Anaheim in it's metro? Then you have long beach, Newport and Laguna, Pasadena, Glendale, Irvine area on top of the usual santa Monica , Beverly hills, wrst Hollywood etc etc...
I'm from Chicago and return once a year. It's not the same.
I don't even think there's a Glendale comparison in Chicago suburbs. It's a unique area and just like Chicago is great being centralized, la is great in the opposite way

.
And there's only a few places as big as Irvine in the country. They're not everywhere.
Tysons is one, Reston/Herndon for DC (but not bigger).
Maybe 5, 10 tops.
And those places don't have a huge University either.
LA has more suburban office clusters than most places because the region is huge and bigger than all other metros in the country outside of NYC. Orange County is pretty unique in that it's a fully suburban county (outside of some urbanish areas of Santa Ana) with a population of 3 million, and sandwiched between LA and San Diego counties. Plus they have one of the biggest tourist attractions in the world- Disneyland. There's a reason they have their own pro sports teams. It's basically its own thing, and while it does serve as a 'bedroom county' of sorts for LA, it's definitely also got its own economy and culture. People in the OC have access to great restaurants, theater and arts, universities, sports...they don't really have to come up to LA all that much unless they want to.

But I disagree that suburban competition is more intense in the LA area than other parts of the country. Remember, the city of LA is itself massive, encompassing over 500 square miles. Many areas that would be counted as suburbs in other places (most of the Valley, for example) are inside the city limits. Are Pasadena, Glendale, Santa Monica, etc. that much different than Silver Spring, Bethesda, Tysons Corner? Besides being larger (because, again, LA is larger than basically everywhere in the US), I don't see too much difference. San Francisco is like a tenth of the size of LA, and they have to deal with Oakland, San Jose, all the cities in the Peninsula and down in Silicon Valley as competition. New York has places like Jersey City, White Planes, Samford...tons more large-ish cities surrounding it. The Phoenix area has suburbs like Mesa, which is pushing 500,000 people, Tempe, Scottsdale, etc. I just don't see LA's situation as being all that different, just on a larger scale.
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  #127  
Old Posted Feb 25, 2020, 6:49 PM
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Well, sure, every city has clusters.
We've been saying the difference is size.
It matters

It would matter between Phoenix and Dallas.

But as you pointed out, Orange county has its own identity , unlike
Dupage or Fairfax. Those places don't have the same amenities.
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  #128  
Old Posted Feb 25, 2020, 7:10 PM
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The Bay Area is probably the most similar to LA in this aspect. It has very large secondary employment centers in Oakland and SJ/Silicon Valley, and to a lesser extent San Mateo/Foster City/South SF, Berkeley, Walnut Creek, Dublin/Pleasanton/San Ramon (the first 2 have decent sized skylines too). It'd be interesting to see the breakdown of how many people work in DTSF vs Silicon Valley vs Oakland and DTLA vs the next 2 largest employment centers. Oakland and SJ also have their own cultural identities as well.
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  #129  
Old Posted Feb 25, 2020, 7:14 PM
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I've spent most of my life living in both San Francisco and Los Angeles, and am extremely familiar with both cities and their histories. My theory has always been that San Francisco didn't fall as far as downtown LA did because of BART. Post-war, right when the car and the suburbs were enticing companies outward, San Francisco started a very coordinated development boom that coincided with the planning and opening of BART. BART allowed an incredible amount of residential development in the suburbs (the East Bay especially) to be directly linked with a fast and frequent rail connection right to downtown San Francisco where tens of millions of square feet of office space were being concurrently developed. If you look at pictures of downtown San Francisco between 1945 and 1985 it shows an insane amount of development. BART kept it all linked together and maintained the focus on the historic central city.
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  #130  
Old Posted Feb 25, 2020, 7:34 PM
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Originally Posted by The North One View Post
Sprawl is the literal opposite of spreading/sharing wealth, it's how wealth is kept behind barriers and segregated.



You can't honestly believe this garbage. If LA had developed in any other country in the world it would look like Toronto or Melbourne. Not the planning mess it is now. Dense sprawl isn't anything to brag about if it's planned horribly. The whole point of density is to share resources and services more efficiently benefiting people. If planning doesn't allow that you don't have those benefits just the negative aspects of both sprawl and density which LA is notoriously known for (having mega highways but also crippling congestion as an example).
Wow, you really have a complex about LA don't you?
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  #131  
Old Posted Feb 25, 2020, 7:38 PM
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Originally Posted by homebucket View Post
The Bay Area is probably the most similar to LA in this aspect. It has very large secondary employment centers in Oakland and SJ/Silicon Valley, and to a lesser extent San Mateo/Foster City/South SF, Berkeley, Walnut Creek, Dublin/Pleasanton/San Ramon (the first 2 have decent sized skylines too). It'd be interesting to see the breakdown of how many people work in DTSF vs Silicon Valley vs Oakland and DTLA vs the next 2 largest employment centers. Oakland and SJ also have their own cultural identities as well.
I agree .
Dc clusters are all the same. Barely any cultural amenities and they all look and function alike.
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  #132  
Old Posted Feb 25, 2020, 8:13 PM
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Originally Posted by The North One View Post
LA has an extremely weak CBD, it's not even comparable to Chicago yet it's nearly double the size as a metro area.
from a strictly business standpoint, with cbd meaning 'central business district', it admittedly isn't competitive enough. Or it hasn't been competitive enough. Ppl running large companies or working for corporations have preferred being elsewhere. but in terms of dtla as an all around community, it has features that now make it one of the more interesting, complete sections of LA.

an article like the following one couldn't have been published with a straight face not all that too many yrs ago....certainly over 10 or 20 yrs ago. but today, it points to LA having a better array of options for ppl into either a urban or burban lifestyle & scene.

A traveler from the midwest a few yrs ago, visiting LA for the annual Rose bowl, wrote that in the past he & other ppl from a college football team or alumni visiting LA to watch their team play in the new year's day game, didn't have any place to go between pasadena & west LA. Or other areas like the south bay or orange county. Or an area they'd want to stay in.

He wrote that while dtla didn't have the fullness of a chicago or NYC, it now offered enough to make it worthwhile for the visitor.

things like the new lucas museum, which is a few miles away from dtla....based on strict boundaries....will also give the general center of LA more sense of place in the future.

I now have a greater appreciation of the multi node nature of LA....That format makes for a more diverse, complicated community. by contrast, cities like NY don't have too much beyond the boundaries of a Manhattan. So while that type of layout is better for a tourist on a limited schedule or an office worker who doesn't want to take a job 15 miles away, it does give LA more options for ppl into different type of settings....from burban to urban.


Quote:
Downtown Los Angeles Is Having a Moment — Here’s What to Experience in the Booming Neighborhood
By Katie Chang December 28, 2019

Dubbed DTLA, downtown Los Angeles has established itself as not just one of the most talked-about neighborhoods in the City of Angels, but the entire country.

The transformation kicked off in 1999, when a city-approved adaptive reuse ordinance was passed — permitting the neighborhood’s abandoned, but historic Art Deco and Beaux-Arts structures to be revitalized into stylish residences and commercial spaces. (Coincidentally, the STAPLES Center was also unveiled in October of that year.) In following years, additional splashy openings (including L.A. Live in 2008, Ace Hotel in 2014, and The Broad in 2015) continued to build momentum and interest in the area.

While many bemoan the need to drive to navigate much of Los Angeles, that’s not the case with DTLA. “You can walk everywhere,” explains Stephane Lacroix, General Manager of the Downtown LA Proper Hotel, which is set to open next spring. “You can’t do that anywhere else in LA.”

Womenswear designer Heidi Merrick — she’s been headquartered in DTLA in for 12 years — says the neighborhood’s ability to support businesses both small and large also solidifies its appeal: “It’s exciting, because it really represents the most unique and best of the city.”

Add to that DTLA’s unusually diverse makeup — Little Tokyo, the Fashion District, and Chinatown all call the area home — along with plenty in the pipeline for 2020 (including restaurants Damian and Ditroit by celebrated chefs Enrique Olvera and Daniela Soto-Innes), and you’ve got all the makings for the quintessential urban neighborhood.
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  #133  
Old Posted Feb 25, 2020, 8:19 PM
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Originally Posted by badrunner View Post
Bunker Hill again? lol. Just out of curiousity, what part of DTLA do you live in, and overall, how do you like it?
I don't live in dt, but I used to work in that part of LA several yrs ago. It is a far cry from what it was like when I was there all the time.

although there are some downsides to dtla of 2020, I'd say it's generally better today than certainly it was 20 yrs or 40 yrs ago. In some ways, it's better than it has ever been since the city of LA was first created....although I admit that's not exactly a super high bar to climb over.
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  #134  
Old Posted Feb 25, 2020, 8:59 PM
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Originally Posted by LA21st View Post
Well, sure, every city has clusters.
We've been saying the difference is size.
It matters

It would matter between Phoenix and Dallas.
But the size of everything in LA is bigger, I guess CBD notwithstanding. I'd expect the suburban employment clusters to be larger in LA than most other places, because LA and its metro area of nearly 20 million people, is larger than every other area in the US outside of NYC.

I'd be very curious to see an analysis like homebucket is describing. Just thinking about it, I'm wondering what the top 3 employment clusters in metro LA are. How concentrated does an area have to be to count as a cluster?
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  #135  
Old Posted Feb 25, 2020, 9:13 PM
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Originally Posted by edale View Post
But the size of everything in LA is bigger, I guess CBD notwithstanding. I'd expect the suburban employment clusters to be larger in LA than most other places, because LA and its metro area of nearly 20 million people, is larger than every other area in the US outside of NYC.

I'd be very curious to see an analysis like homebucket is describing. Just thinking about it, I'm wondering what the top 3 employment clusters in metro LA are. How concentrated does an area have to be to count as a cluster?
It's not just employment though.
They're activity centers, for lack of a better word.
Anaheim and Newport Beach/Laguna arn't really employment centers.
They're just popular draws that most metros don't have. It takes more people away from la or downtown etc. And when you add in employment centers like Irvine, it's just more shit. You can say other cities have something similar, and it's kinda true but it kind of isn't.

What in Chicago or dc draws people to their suburbs? Not much. Tysons? Reston? Malls?
To me, this more the norm for other cities than la's stuff.
Universal studios/city walk is in the city limits and 7 miles from downtown. No matter what you think of Hollywood, it's still popular and not many cities have something like that.

Last edited by LA21st; Feb 25, 2020 at 9:29 PM.
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  #136  
Old Posted Feb 25, 2020, 9:17 PM
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Originally Posted by edale View Post
But the size of everything in LA is bigger, I guess CBD notwithstanding. I'd expect the suburban employment clusters to be larger in LA than most other places, because LA and its metro area of nearly 20 million people, is larger than every other area in the US outside of NYC.

I'd be very curious to see an analysis like homebucket is describing. Just thinking about it, I'm wondering what the top 3 employment clusters in metro LA are. How concentrated does an area have to be to count as a cluster?
From 1997
https://www.researchgate.net/figure/...fig3_298419278

LA PROPER ONLY
http://www.scag.ca.gov/Documents/map...entDensity.pdf
2000


Trying to find more updated data.
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  #137  
Old Posted Feb 25, 2020, 9:23 PM
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What in Chicago draws people to their suburbs? Not much.
yeah, suburban chicago is pretty light on major attractions.

unless they're staying with/visiting family out in the burbs, your typical visitor to chicago has little reason to ever venture out there.



possible exceptions:

oak park: the largest collection of frank lloyd wright architecture on the planet (and really, oak park is just a city neighborhood that successfully fought annexation over a century ago; it's not a traditional burb).

six flags great america: it's cool and all, but not terribly different from the other dozen six flags parks sprinkled around the country.

uhhhhh...............




yeah, welcome to one of the most highly centralized metro areas in the nation.

chicago is definitely an "all of your eggs in one basket" kinda town.
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  #138  
Old Posted Feb 25, 2020, 9:26 PM
edale edale is offline
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Originally Posted by LA21st View Post
It's not just employment though.
They're activity centers, for lack of a better word.
Anaheim and Newport Beach/Laguna arn't really employment centers.
They're just popular draws that most metros don't have. It takes more people away from la or downtown etc. And when you add in employment centers like Irvine, it's just more shit. You can say other cities have something similar, and it's kinda true but it kind of isn't.

What in Chicago or dc draws people to their suburbs? Not much. Tysons? Reston? Malls?
To me, this more the norm for other cities than la's stuff.
Well the entire CA coast is an attraction, so if we're talking about tourist attractions and such, too, then San Diego and SF have similar situations as LA. I don't know about Chicago, but in DC, there are several draws in the burbs. Old Town Alexandria, best shopping in the region (Tysons), National Harbor, Air and Space museum out in Chantilly, the Pentagon and Arlington Cemetery, University of Maryland up in College Park, Skins stadium in Landover, Wolf Trap amphitheater, Great Falls...
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  #139  
Old Posted Feb 25, 2020, 9:32 PM
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Originally Posted by edale View Post
Well the entire CA coast is an attraction, so if we're talking about tourist attractions and such, too, then San Diego and SF have similar situations as LA. I don't know about Chicago, but in DC, there are several draws in the burbs. Old Town Alexandria, best shopping in the region (Tysons), National Harbor, Air and Space museum out in Chantilly, the Pentagon and Arlington Cemetery, University of Maryland up in College Park, Skins stadium in Landover, Wolf Trap amphitheater, Great Falls...

Dude, come on.
For your great falls thing or wolf trap I name countless things in la metro.
Skins stadium in the middle of nowhere?
So anaheims stadiums count ?
The rose bowl ?

I wasn't even thinking about those things but if you want to mention every thing, la will have a massive list.

Last edited by LA21st; Feb 25, 2020 at 9:42 PM.
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  #140  
Old Posted Feb 25, 2020, 9:42 PM
edale edale is offline
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Dude, come on.
For your great falls thing or wolf trap I name countless things in la metro.
Skins stadium?
So anaheims stadiums count ?
The rose bowl ?

I wasn't even thinking about those things but if you want to mention every thing, la will have a massive list.
What're you trying to prove here? LA has more suburban attractions than any other place in the country and that's why our downtown sucked for decades? These suburban attractions are still there and still thriving, even as Downtown LA has come roaring back with investment. So what does that say about your theory?

All I was saying is that every city worth a damn has attractions outside of their city limits, and this hasn't prevented central cities from thriving. If LA has been sluggish when it comes to downtown revitalization in comparison to other cities, I don't think you can claim it's because of suburban tourist attractions. The answer to this question has been answered several times here already- DTLA is at the edge of the city limits, away from the coast, and was largely deemed irrelevant as a business center for many years as a new downtown was built in Century City and the West Side office market flourished. It's probably most analogous to St. Louis in this regard, and Downtown STL has also been pretty slow to come back, even compared to its midwestern peers. All this discussion about other cities not having Disneyland or Newport Beach are irrelevant. LA has benefited exponentially from having Disneyland and the coastal communities in its back yard, and has no doubt been more helped by these amenities than hurt by them.
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