The rising Western skyline

[JAYNYC]

edale:

Originally Posted by edale

Riverside is an urbanized area, but not a city.

also edale:

Originally Posted by edale

Of course the municipality of Riverside is a city.

go figure.

[JAYNYC]

Originally Posted by edale

Are you being intentionally obtuse, or have you never been to Riverside/the IE?

Lived in L.A. for years. Have been to Riverside, though generally avoided it. And?

[Sun Belt]

This whole discussion about Riverside MSA not being a city is pretty dumb. It's a highly urbanized region, Riverside city is just one small aspect to the MSA.

It's home to 2 million jobs, has a large airport, home to a UC and a Cal-State along with other smaller schools. Yeah it doesn't have sports franchises, but that's because L.A. has 2 of everything and Vegas is 3 hours away with yet another NHL and soon to be home to another NFL team. That means within 1-3 hour drive from Riverside MSA, they have 3 NFL teams, 3 NHL teams, 3 MLB teams, 2 NBA teams.

A 4 hour drive and those Riverside MSA residents are in the realm of the Phoenix MSA, home to all 4 sports franchises.

It's oversaturated with sports/teams options already.

[mhays]

That's not what people are talking about. The point is it's an extension of the LA area.

[llamaorama]

I've never been there(at least as an adult, as a kid pretty sure we blew past it on the freeway). From Google Maps it looks like an oasis of well-kept older neighborhoods with mature tree canopy and a cute downtown area. Surrounded by low-end desert sprawl and giant warehouse zones.

One of the interesting features I've found also in Google Maps is the giant feedlots located around Chino. I bet the smell and the swarms of flies are unbearable. Probably contributes to poor air quality and massive runoff pollution in a valley with a smog problem. And it takes up a lot of land and probably uses a lot of water in a place with a scarcity of both. There's no good reason for those operations to even be there, the other components of the meat and dairy industry are all up north in the central valley. I know people see farmers as salt of the earth and developers and suburbanites as scum therefore they will probably defend the feedlots and mock people who see them as a nuisance. IMO the state should implement some sort of regulation worded in such a way that all of those operations are shut down. Imagine then the huge opportunity to build hundreds of thousands of new homes, perhaps all together according to some master plan which would accord higher density, etc. For once I'm rooting for the greedy bad guys.

[Maldive]

Got laid in Riverside but also busted my ankle that never healed (drunken proof to the woman that I could do a back flip).

I don't think of Riverside as part of L.A. Even driving wrong footed it was far away.

Good people though.

[Sun Belt]

Originally Posted by mhays

That's not what people are talking about. The point is it's an extension of the LA area.

Did you read the last few pages?

It's an extension of the Greater Los Angeles Area, similar to O.C., but the Riverside MSA is actually it's own place and has it's own identity. Orange County is part of the LA MSA, yet not nearly as many people as some would think that are from Orange County would say they're from "L.A."

Riverside MSA is an urban environment with or without super talls in some district.

[jd3189]

I will agree with the sentiments a few here have stated about Riverside. Even though the cities and towns of the Inland Empire have grown much because of their proximity to LA, they are still quite independent from LA. Many of these towns, like the one I currently live in, Redlands, San Bernadino, Riverside, Irvine, Ontario, etc, existed long before the mega growth of LA in the mid 20th century and still retain their own identity and barely depend on LA for jobs, recreation, etc, if at all.

I think it was mentioned before a while ago that Southerb California is extremely multinodal. It’s essentially a bunch of cities and towns surrounded by vast amounts of dense suburbs within large areas of valleys, hills, etc. LA may be the largest city, but it doesn’t control everything in its vicinity like NYC or Chicago do for their metros.

[mhays]

It's still one big city, even with tendrils and some identity outside the core.

Most cities are like that, just not on LA's scale.

[SLO]

All of the Inland Empire is suburban Los Angeles. As with any metro area many of the suburbs there existed as small towns before, but there are others that sprang out of no where and infill continues at a rapid pace. Now living in So Cal, the area overall is much better than I anticipated for suburban quality of life.

[edale]

Originally Posted by edale

Are you being intentionally obtuse, or have you never been to Riverside/the IE?

Lived in L.A. for years. Have been to Riverside, though generally avoided it. And?

Intentionally obtuse. Got it.

[JAYNYC]

Originally Posted by edale

Intentionally obtuse. Got it.

Your words, not mine. Nice try speaking on my behalf. I flat out disagree with you, as do many other posters who've commented in this thread. Bottom line, Riverside IS a city, and has it's own unique identity outside of L.A. Whether or not Crawford would consider Riverside - which sits in an MSA of 4.5 million people - to be a big city based on your suggestion that he tends to consider big city as in dense urban core city, not population - is for you and he to decide.

Interesting that you don't have any response to the contradictory statements ("Riverside is an urbanized area, but not a city", "Of course the municipality of Riverside is a city") that YOU, in fact, made.

[COtoOC]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

the major US cities that immediately stick out to me as having particularly weak skylines relative to their size are phoenix, san jose, and san diego*, and all are FAA height restricted.

my guess is that all of them would have much taller and more impressive skylines we're it not for their unfortunate airport proximity/alignment relative to downtown.



(*) and DC too, but DC is its own unique situation where the city has consciously decided that it does not want to be a skyscraper city.

Honolulu sort of fits into that category as well. Lots of skyscrapers from downtown to Waikiki, but I assume the height restriction is due to the nearby airport.

[edale]

Originally Posted by JAYNYC

Interesting that you don't have any response to the contradictory statements ("Riverside is an urbanized area, but not a city", "Of course the municipality of Riverside is a city") that YOU, in fact, made.

I didn't respond because it was, in my opinion, an obvious and dumb comment.

Let's recall the context of this discussion. Large cities with weak skylines. It was noted that San Jose, with its population exceeding 1 million people, has a lame skyline for its size. Crawford replied that SJ is not the real city in the Bay Area, and that its skyline reflects the fact that its size is a product of SF/Bay Area growth than SJ being a bonafide, stand alone city. Riverside was thrown out as an example of this same situation in Southern California. No one was arguing that Riverside is an unincorporated area managed by the county.

So to be explicit, yes, Riverside is an incorporated municipality and is a city. It has a city government and taxing ability. There are literally hundreds of cities in Southern California. This doesn't take away from the fact that these cities are all part of the sprawling LA region. Yes, the IE and Orange County and Ventura County all have their own quirks and some differentiation in their local cultures. But all revolve around the big city of the region- Los Angeles. It's where they get their news, watch sports, catch international flights, etc. The IE is an urbanized area with some older historical nodes mixed in with the sprawl. Riverside, however, is not a core city in the way it's being discussed here.

Does that clear things up?

[mhays]

True, while 4.5 million is a really big chunk of sprawl with scattered older places, it's still sprawl and scattered older places, not its own city.

Looking at office brokerage reports, they either put R/SB as a subcategory of LA, or tie R/SB's demand to overflow from LA County etc. Also, while free brokerage inventory reports aren't encyclopedic by a longshot, the first one I saw says the whole market is 30 msf of office...a fraction of what a "city" of 4.5 million would have...because it's partially a bedroom community without much of a white-collar sector.

[pwright1]

Snapped this pic on Christmas night 2018 of the downtown LA skyline. Lots of new additions to the skyline with more to come.