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Old Posted Aug 24, 2019, 10:37 PM
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DenseCityPlease DenseCityPlease is offline
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Join Date: Feb 2013
Location: California
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Allow me to pile on. The Detroit - Los Angles comparison is thoughtful and apt. One the one hand you have the last great American city of the prewar era, and on the other the first great American city of the postwar era. Their commonality is a two decade period from the 1930s through the 1950s when both supported robust urban-lite multi-family housing and zero setback commercial corridors built around streetcar networks, and at the same time ravenous suburban development facilitated by a burgeoning freeway network.

That one city continued to grow after the 1960s while the other began to recede is not really relevant. The essential fabric of expansive gridded streets and linear urbanism (consider Woodward and Wilshire as fraternal twins) is striking. The fact the the two cities took divergent paths in the late 20th century makes the comparison all the more fascinating, and the fact that their similarity is apparently too obscure for some of this forum’s less sophisticated contributors makes it all the more fun.
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