Quote:
Originally Posted by iheartthed
Yes and no. Detroit was far more dense than Los Angeles is today. Detroit was more similar to peak Philadelphia in density (and population). The areas of Detroit built between 1920 and 1950 have a pretty strong resemblance to those areas built in Los Angeles during that period. This is actually the building stock in Detroit that is most likely to still exist and has strong resemblances to the prewar sfh areas of L.A.
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Interesting that Detroit was denser back then.
The interwar built form of LA, Detroit, and some other American cities seems to be a good balance between the wall-to-wall mixed use development you see in the prewar cities and the extreme Euclidean low density development seen in most of the postwar Sunbelt.
Again, besides downtown LA, most of the city's core and outside nodes are in a streetcar suburb layout with one to two story commercial corridors with occasional large apartment buildings. A lot of the residential side streets have rows of small apartment buildings, often with basement parking, but not as bad as the larger parking podiums or blatant parking lots adjacent like in other parts of the metro ( ex. where I lived before in the IE).
Yes, LA is built mainly for the car in mind. But I would argue that it's one of the finest examples of a city that incorporates the automobile while not being overly hostile to pedestrians, at least in the American context. The neighborhoods are still scaled for people to walk around amongst the cars and it could be a great place for more cycling infrastructure. You still feel like you're in a bustling place even when you're in Hollywood, Venice, Mid Wilshire, Koreatown, Boyle Heights, Westlake, Echo Park, etc.
And the quasi urban/suburban feel is actually a benefit, in my opinion. That's something California does right for its type of urbanism. From the air LA looks like all concrete and asphalt, but it has a good amount of greenery for each plot on the street level. In order to provide more housing, they would just need to keep building those small apartments throughout the city/county and build larger mixed use complexes around metro stations, which is already happening in Boyle Heights and other hoods.
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