Quote:
Originally Posted by LA21st
Eh, you can do those kinds of samples for Chicago or DC too. Doesn't tell much. It's probably one the most urban "newer" suburbs in the whole country.
Most of Santa Monica is pretty dense, with walkable commercial strips througout.
Wilshire, Main, Santa Monica, Ocean Park, Colorado, Broadway, Montana, Pico etc. You're never more than a few blocks from retail/restaurants and there's solid transit. Even the numerous office buildings have street facing retail everywhere in the neighborhoods.
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A neighborhood can simultaneously be fairly dense and have businesses to walk to while still being suburban in its basic form. IMO most of LA is just dense suburban style development. Most everywhere has generous side and front setbacks, curb cuts are very prevalent, the streets tend to be wide, and the commercial corridors are dominated by suburban style development. Land of the corner strip mall and what not.
But lots (for SFHs) are pretty small and packed close together, and literally almost every buildable parcel in the entire LA basin is built out. So you end up with a suburban-ish looking environment that is deceptively dense. It's walkable in the sense that you
can walk to a variety of things, but it wasn't built with the pedestrian in mind. That's why it can be somewhat tough to determine suburban areas from the City of LA. The suburbs are dense, and the city, while dense, is largely suburban in its built form. It's a totally different paradigm than the rest of the country.