Should there be any doubt that LA belongs among the big 6 urban US cities?

[TempleGuy1000]

Originally Posted by Docere

The "old world" of Boston's North End:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KlNAYCcxgUw

A spaghetti commercial? lol. C'mon, we can do better than that.

Here's an actual look into the old world: 'A Place to Live' - 1941

• Video Link

"Thousands of houses surrounding an island where the towers stand tall. An ocean of rooftops under which millions of people live and work"

It's such a good watch about what people thought about life right before WW2. Life in America would never be the same after (for good and bad)

Like I said in the other comment, LA, while certainly not as structurally as dense as Philadelphia or NYC, still was a large city even by that time period.

[jmecklenborg]

Originally Posted by Docere

The "old world" of Boston's North End:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KlNAYCcxgUw

I have not seen the full movie but there is a comedy from the early 1970s that featured footage of Cincinnati's doomed West End:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gPrhO-KgRTk

They literally...blew up row houses for laughs the movie.

[iheartthed]

Boston feels more colonial America to me than European. New York's older surviving neighborhoods also feel more colonial American to me than European.

Originally Posted by Crawford

North End is very tight and fine grained, but not sure it's an outlier. Beacon Hill, and neighborhoods in NYC and Philly, have similar scale.

Beacon Hill-
https://www.google.com/maps/@42.358847,-...A2JwPCV2fpw!2e0!7i16384!8i8192?entry=ttu

Central Village, NYC-
https://www.google.com/maps/@40.7299132,...3aLvxTQgeEg!2e0!7i16384!8i8192?entry=ttu

West Village, NYC-
https://www.google.com/maps/@40.7319261,...Ow595KvC7Lg!2e0!7i16384!8i8192?entry=ttu

I actually think Beacon Hill has the best scale in Boston, but it's just the southern part around Louisburg Square. It's a few blocks, but damn good blocks.

I would add these too for NYC:

Brooklyn Heights: https://maps.app.goo.gl/oicbmMaWzdf3LQJg6

Lower Manhattan is London-like in that they built large buildings without retrofitting the street grid with large roads, and they also retained some of the colonial era architecture. So you have skyscrapers mixed in with 300 year old buildings along a street grid that was laid out 400 years ago and hasn't changed must since:

https://maps.app.goo.gl/RHUSd3qRFKXw7kQRA

https://maps.app.goo.gl/Z2oEakjxvKPExgxR6

[Segun]

The big major difference in European Vs American design, IMO, is how traffic functions. In London, the "big" avenues aren't very large and they meander. Paris has wide boulevards, but even those wide boulevards are flanked by extra wide sidewalks. It gives the impression that pedestrians rule over traffic. Even in Manhattan, this mostly isn't the case.

What surprised me about Boston was how few large, wide avenues there were over such a large area. Driving in Boston, you're likely to get stuck on a 2-lane road that serves as a major arterial boulevard.

[MonkeyRonin]

Boston's architecture is thoroughly American, but I'd agree that the North End is the closest thing in built form that the US (or Canada) has to a medieval, old world cityscape - in that it has a consistent form of 4-6 storey apartments on narrow, winding streets over a substantial area that sprung up organically.




It's not quite Rome or Barcelona, but it's closer to these than places like Beacon Hill or Brooklyn Heights are, which seem more American in form & scale:






Beacon Hill:




Brooklyn Heights:




Montreal's Old Port is too new and organized - it looks more like an 18th/19th century European city centre. Quebec's walled city is probably the next closest thing, though the architecture & scale is more in line with a small town in Normandy or Brittany or something.

[iheartthed]

Maybe we're broad brushing European cities a bit too much. I don't really see Boston at all in Rome or Barcelona. Rome and Barcelona (especially Rome) feature avenues and streets with widths that would not be out of place in many North American city cores. For example:

https://maps.app.goo.gl/Jrn7AVtT43KSa53EA

https://maps.app.goo.gl/FDfRvgg28HJuqy1r5

vs.

https://maps.app.goo.gl/9aiPmMtehrvnkin27

https://maps.app.goo.gl/tnTsEfpWq7jPsf1M8

But in those two examples you can see that there's a major difference in how much public space those cities dedicate to cars. Rome looks more like New York with cars squeezed in everywhere, while Barcelona dedicates a lot of space to pedestrians. However, I think Barcelona's grid is more similar to the grids found in New York.

Also, no city in America has something that resembles a true medieval neighborhood in Europe. Boston has a street network and property system that survives from the colonial era, though. New York does as well, but it makes up a much smaller percentage of the city than it does in Boston. However, this is what I mean when I say medieval era neighborhood:

https://maps.app.goo.gl/3zN9kWcrP7Fp9tKD8

https://maps.app.goo.gl/mSovYCi9w26od3th8

[DZH22]

Originally Posted by iheartthed

Also, no city in America has something that resembles a true medieval neighborhood in Europe. Boston has a street network and property system that survives from the colonial era, though. New York does as well, but it makes up a much smaller percentage of the city than it does in Boston. However, this is what I mean when I say medieval era neighborhood:

https://maps.app.goo.gl/3zN9kWcrP7Fp9tKD8

https://maps.app.goo.gl/mSovYCi9w26od3th8

The closest approximation I can think of in the North End is this pedestrian way here:
https://www.google.com/maps/@42.3662605,...HNV2UGabB4g!2e0!7i16384!8i8192?entry=ttu

There's also a lot of very thin streets similar to this (spin 360 for a familiar view):
https://www.google.com/maps/@42.3652717,...C-TFOs5hbJQ!2e0!7i16384!8i8192?entry=ttu

Plus pedestrian alleys such as:
https://www.google.com/maps/@42.3620928,...91p0RtEcYsg!2e0!7i16384!8i8192?entry=ttu

[MonkeyRonin]

Originally Posted by iheartthed

Maybe we're broad brushing European cities a bit too much. I don't really see Boston at all in Rome or Barcelona. Rome and Barcelona (especially Rome) feature avenues and streets with widths that would not be out of place in many North American city cores. For example:

https://maps.app.goo.gl/Jrn7AVtT43KSa53EA

https://maps.app.goo.gl/FDfRvgg28HJuqy1r5

vs.

https://maps.app.goo.gl/9aiPmMtehrvnkin27

https://maps.app.goo.gl/tnTsEfpWq7jPsf1M8

But in those two examples you can see that there's a major difference in how much public space those cities dedicate to cars. Rome looks more like New York with cars squeezed in everywhere, while Barcelona dedicates a lot of space to pedestrians. However, I think Barcelona's grid is more similar to the grids found in New York.

Also, no city in America has something that resembles a true medieval neighborhood in Europe. Boston has a street network and property system that survives from the colonial era, though. New York does as well, but it makes up a much smaller percentage of the city than it does in Boston. However, this is what I mean when I say medieval era neighborhood:

https://maps.app.goo.gl/3zN9kWcrP7Fp9tKD8

https://maps.app.goo.gl/mSovYCi9w26od3th8

"European" is indeed a very broad brush. Bleak post-war tower blocks are probably more representative of a larger swath of Europe than quaint medieval centres are, for example, which makes the whole "what's the most European place in North America" question kind of a stupid discussion (in that case, one could make the argument that the most "European" place here is suburban Toronto ); but what I'm getting at is that Boston's North End is the closest thing we have to the sort of tightly-packed Medieval urbanism that's only really found in Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa.

It's not a perfect facsimile or anything (as it was built a few hundred years later), but I think it's still closer to those Barcelona examples than anywhere else in North America, and is so over a significant area (other cities might have a block or two of similar urbanism, but not a complete neighborhood). Lower Manhattan was built in a similar way, but it's too high-rise today. Likewise with downtown Boston.

[iheartthed]

I'll submit another North American city to the most European-like contest: San Juan

[jmecklenborg]

Boston's North End is noteworthy but physically very, very small. It's about 2,000x2,000 feet, or about 1/3 the size of New Orleans' French Quarter.

[Klippenstein]

Originally Posted by iheartthed

I'll submit another North American city to the most European-like contest: San Juan

Ever been to Guanajuato? I'd submit it as a contender. One of the coolest cities I've ever been to in Mexico. Founded in 1548 and a UNESCO World Heritage site. Birthplace of Diego Rivera. He once said "huele a caca" or it smells like poop because there was a tunnel/drainage system that smelled horrendous that now carries a lot of the traffic through the city allowing many of the surface streets to be car free. Definitely not as big as San Juan though.

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by Klippenstein

Ever been to Guanajuato? I'd submit it as a contender. One of the coolest cities I've ever been to in Mexico. Founded in 1548 and a UNESCO World Heritage site. Birthplace of Diego Rivera. He once said "huele a caca" or it smells like poop because there was a tunnel/drainage system that smelled horrendous that now carries a lot of the traffic through the city allowing many of the surface streets to be car free. Definitely not as big as San Juan though.

I haven't been there, but this is definitely what I would call "medieval" looking: https://maps.app.goo.gl/MaFryUEnMAPCkW9P7

If all the buildings were painted white with blue trim it would look exactly like a village on a Greek island or something.

[destroycreate]

I've been to Guanajuato - it's AMAZING - and yes, the closest I've ever felt to being in Europe on this side of the pond.

[MonkeyRonin]

Well yeah, if we're going to include Latin America and the Caribbean then there are a whole bunch that are even closer than Boston: Havana, Santo Domingo, Cartagena, Panama City, etc. These are some of the oldest cities in the Americas after all - as old as some European cities, even. Guess I should have said, "the type of urbanism that's only really found in Europe, the Middle East, North Africa, and Latin America".

[wwmiv]

Originally Posted by MonkeyRonin

Well yeah, if we're going to include Latin America and the Caribbean then there are a whole bunch that are even closer than Boston: Havana, Santo Domingo, Cartagena, Panama City, etc. These are some of the oldest cities in the Americas after all - as old as some European cities, even. Guess I should have said, "the type of urbanism that's only really found in Europe, the Middle East, North Africa, and Latin America".

I mean... is this true though? There are plenty of cities in Asia, India, the Pacific, etc., that have narrow street, historic, organic, alleyway, pedestrian-scale urbanism of the same variety. The architecture is obviously different, but the paradigm is the same.

The only places that don't have LOTS of examples are (a) Africa (because it largely never had sustained development and maintenance of these types of places over large spans of time) and (b) the major places that Brits colonized (Australia/New Zealand, Canada/United States), but nowhere in any of these countries existed anything like what was elsewhere prior to their colonization. That isn’t to say that places that existed weren’t substantial (Cahokia, for instance, and various places in the Southwest), they just built in an entirely different way.

Mexico, however, did and had numerous examples of indigenous medieval cities. Tenochtitlan was one of the world’s largest urban places at the time and rivaled anywhere existing in the old world at first contact.

[Shawn]

Originally Posted by wwmiv

I mean... is this true though? There are plenty of cities in Asia, India, the Pacific, etc., that have narrow street, historic, organic, alleyway, pedestrian-scale urbanism of the same variety. The architecture is obviously different, but the paradigm is the same.

Japan, Korea, and large swaths of China don't have much extant historical examples of this. Earthquakes, wars, and Communism, coupled with a historical preference for wooden architecture (because of all the earthquakes) makes a place like Kanazawa or Kyoto's Golden Gai rare. How many hutongs are left in Beijing?

I wouldn't be surprised to find out that Boston has more 17th and 18th century architecture than any city in Japan outside of the ones explicitly saved from US bombing (Kyoto, Kanazawa).

[Docere]

New England vs England:

https://myvintagemap.com/similarities-between-new-england-and-england/

[MonkeyRonin]

Originally Posted by wwmiv

I mean... is this true though? There are plenty of cities in Asia, India, the Pacific, etc., that have narrow street, historic, organic, alleyway, pedestrian-scale urbanism of the same variety. The architecture is obviously different, but the paradigm is the same.

This is getting too broad of a "type" now. Aside from the relative rarity of surviving in-tact historical neighbourhoods in Asia, the form is quite different from what was found in Europe & the Mediterranean region - even if it has many of the same basic "ingredients". Take China's traditional Hutongs neighbourhoods for example: they're comprised of primarily single-storey courtyard houses:


https://projects.archiexpo.com/project-267309.html


Likewise in Japana & Korea, which did not traditionally have the multi-storey masonry apartment typology. The organic, tight, pedestrian scale is a big part of it, but this kinda stuff is also just a specific form of a specific part of the world - it wasn't necessarily universal to medieval cities everywhere: (and Boston's North End is just the closest to this very specific form in the US/Canada)


https://www.shutterstock.com/search/aerial-view-seville

[lio45]

Originally Posted by MonkeyRonin

Boston's architecture is thoroughly American, but I'd agree that the North End is the closest thing in built form that the US (or Canada) has to a medieval, old world cityscape - in that it has a consistent form of 4-6 storey apartments on narrow, winding streets over a substantial area that sprung up organically.

It's not quite Rome or Barcelona, but it's closer to these than places like Beacon Hill or Brooklyn Heights are, which seem more American in form & scale:


Montreal's Old Port is too new and organized - it looks more like an 18th/19th century European city centre. Quebec's walled city is probably the next closest thing, though the architecture & scale is more in line with a small town in Normandy or Brittany or something.

The walled core of Quebec City has a bit of a grid (though really not much of one, compared to the downtowns of newer planned cities like Toronto and Vancouver and most US cities); I think St. John’s is a better example of a quasi-medieval inner city grid.

[TempleGuy1000]

Originally Posted by jmecklenborg

Boston's North End is noteworthy but physically very, very small. It's about 2,000x2,000 feet, or about 1/3 the size of New Orleans' French Quarter.

This really is such an important point. I don't want to sound like a hater because the Backbay and the North End are architectural gems, but Boston's a city of triple-deckers and houses with siding and shingles. It is distinctly New England and American. Which is different than the rowhouses of the mid-Atlantic which mirrored the terraces being built all across the ocean in the UK and Ireland.

Liverpool:


Northeast Philadelphia:



According to a study at UCLA, Springfield, MA and Philadelphia, PA have the most narrow streets in the United States.

https://streetwidths.its.ucla.edu/

Information from this article from RentCafe/Yardi/Property Shark, shows Philadelphia has the second smallest average houses on the smallest average lot (on the smallest streets) in the United States.

https://www.rentcafe.com/blog/self-storage/us-cities-with-the-least-living-space/