Are you guys high? Detroit and L.A. are complete opposites of each other in nearly every metric.

^^^ Not really. At Detroit’s peak, it was dense with streetcar suburb development and a substantial car culture. LA was the same but it did not experience much of a decline like Detroit did.

Detroit peaked 70 years ago.

So now we're really comparing L.A. to Detroit?

Like, seriously? :rolleyes: :runaway:

I agree with the assessment that their basic geography is the product of the same era.

I've never been to Minneapolis, but I get the impression it has a lot of similarities to Edmonton.

- River cities
- Cold winters (granted, not nearly as cold as Edmonton)
- Gigantic malls
- Big arts/theatre scenes
- Indigenous/Native American history
- Hockey and sports towns

One major difference, other than size, is that Edmonton is in Calgary's shadow, whereas Minneapolis is the dominant city in the region.

One test I find relevant is to look at blind Street View examples (without looking in the upper left corner, I mean) then try to honestly determine if you could know you're not in the city you're told you are.

Here's two links - click on them and turn around 180 degrees, or even explore the area a bit if you want. I'll say "it's Montreal".


https://www.google.com/maps/@46.8251...7i13312!8i6656


https://www.google.com/maps/@46.3489...7i13312!8i6656


Here's a bonus - an "Existential Covfefe" graffiti I randomly stumbled upon! (Note that the housing behind that Ford cube van is also Montrealish so it's an okay example for my purposes anyway.)

https://www.google.com/maps/@46.8268...7i13312!8i6656

In my case I think with the above test you could fool me into confusing Philly and Baltimore, or Cleveland and Buffalo, or Pittsburgh and Cincinnati.

detroit and los angeles are definitely related on the original DNA of the built environment front. i’ve made this argument before, and i think anyone familiar on the ground as well as historically with either city should see this. detroit was sort of the last model year for midwestern core cities which roughly corresponded to the same time that los angeles was starting to hit its stride.

Yes, and you could actually even do the same for Trois-Rivières. Though you can't really do the same for Quebec's other three main cities (Gatineau, Sherbrooke, Saguenay) as they grew up with fairly different architectural influences.

Which is too bad IMO. It would have been cool if the Montreal-style architectural vernacular had spread out all over Quebec, in the way you kinda see that going on in France with a variant of Parisian architecture replicated to some degree in most of the cities.

Detroit and Los Angeles are absolutely siblings. I can't see the argument against it.

Detroit even has its own "Century City" type skyline with Southfield!

So does Houston (Uptown/Galleria) and Atlanta (Buckhead).

So are Detroit, L.A., Houston and Atlanta similar in nearly every respect?

Miami/Dallas/Pheonix? If you are talking only about suburbs (which seems a bit strange) I can see Miami and Pheonix but Miami and Dallas could not be any more dissimilar (I have spent a lot of time in each). Like not in any way similar. The cores are completely different in every way, the suburbs are completely different in every way. Dallas and Houston are much more similar.

70 years ago, in 1950 when L.A. had a population of 1.9 million and Detroit was around 1.8 million, they really weren't that similar.

This thread isn't about what cities were similar to one another at some random point in time.

If we are talking burbs than any cities burbs to any other are pretty similar other than plants and what materials coat the outside of single family homes.

I cant imagine how anyone could think Phoenix and Miami (or Tampa) are similar at all, Dallas maybe but really its more comparable to other western cities like Vegas, Denver, Salt Lake, much of the LA area, Sacramento, etc etc

I exclude El Paso, ABQ and Tucson as they have retained a unique "southwestern" or "old west" feel compared to the cities I listed above. Places like Denver, Vegas, LA, Phoenix which had very western vibes (sometimes recently) have all shed that feel for a more "West Coast" in general feel.

Florida? Absolutely not..

Detroit, like LA, is a product of the auto age. Both are (or, in the case of Detroit, were) decentralized cities characterized by long linear corridors of quasi-urban commercial density, bordered by suburbanish residential. They were quite similar at a neighborhood level when Detroit was intact.

Even today, the more intact Detroit corridors have an LA-ish hybrid urban-suburb feel, Clearly auto oriented, but parking in the rear and theoretical walkability. You don't really get this look in the NE Corridor or the older Midwestern cities:

https://www.google.com/maps/@42.4204...7i16384!8i8192

I agree they are different I was just pointing out that Miami and Pheonix both have the sort of densely packed suburbia that just abruptly stops rather than petering out like most places. If that is how he was saying Miami and Pheonix were the same then at least I could see that comparison.

yeah i mean, take south central, or even lower beverly hills, strip away the vegetation and mediterranean fake-flare and you have almost an identical built environment with similar tree lawn and sidewalk dimensions, housing types. the divergence on the commercial corridors, massive later century apartment infill and replacement, owing to wealth shifts, demographics, etc has been stark of course, but it was them same bones.

Parts of the bungalow belt in Chicago can look like LA/Detroit.