A tale of two downtowns in L.A.: As offices languish, apartments thrive

[DCReid]

This article says LA has 90,000 residents and 47,000 residential units. I wonder if they are including more than the core downtown. Would that make it the 3rd largest downtown in residents?

...By many measures, downtown Los Angeles' newest apartment tower is over the top with such gilded flourishes as stone tiles from Spain lining the elevator cabs and hand-troweled Italian plaster on interior walls. Humming birds have somehow found the fruit-laden trees decorating the outdoor lounge on the 41st floor...

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/real...f6c772a2&ei=24

[mhays]

DTLA never had a huge residential density, and hasn't led in construction. That's for a large land area. Still a lot of growth though.

I imagine and apples-to-apples comparison would put it around #8 or something like that in terms of overall DT population and density.

LA's density is mostly to the west.

[craigs]

Here's a preview of the article:

A tale of two downtowns in L.A.: As offices languish, apartments thrive

Roger Vincent
Los Angeles Times
May 2, 2024

By many measures, downtown Los Angeles’ newest apartment tower is over the top with such gilded flourishes as stone tiles from Spain lining the elevator cabs and hand-troweled Italian plaster on interior walls. Humming birds have somehow found the fruit-laden trees decorating the outdoor lounge on the 41st floor.

For Stuart Morkun, the developer who oversaw construction of the recently completed Figueroa Eight skyscraper, it was the porte cochere, where residents leave their cars with valets, that really stood out. The travertine used to build it was mined from the same quarry outside of Rome that supplied stone for the Colosseum, New York City’s Lincoln Center and the Getty Museum.
. . . .
In fact, the decision to go big on Figueroa Eight, which opened last month, reflects an unusual disconnect playing out in the neighborhood: While downtown as a place to work still struggles to find its footing post-COVID, downtown as a residential center is thriving. It boasts a large stock of housing in fancy new high-rises and converted historic buildings at rents that are well below those on the popular Westside.
. . . .

[craigs]

Originally Posted by mhays

DTLA never had a huge residential density, and hasn't led in construction. That's for a large land area. Still a lot of growth though.

I imagine and apples-to-apples comparison would put it around #8 or something like that in terms of overall DT population and density.

LA's density is mostly to the west.

Downtown Los Angeles, by most definitions, covers a large geography. But the vast majority of new and converted residential units "downtown" are contained within a fraction of the overall area.

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by DCReid

Would that make it the 3rd largest downtown in residents?

Getting consistent, apples-to apples definitions for what constitutes "downtown" to compare cities is very hard to do.

Every single time a ranking of "downtown populations" has appeared in this forum, it has been immediately met with the "they shoulda included this/they shoulda omitted that" taffy pulling.

Doing a hard ranking of it is a fool's errand IMO, but we all know who the usual suspects are that rise to the top, led of course by whatever you want to include of Manhattan, which is by far #1 in the US for any kind of human density measurement.

[mhays]

I'm not talking averages. There was no group of census tracts that would rank very highly in 2020 last I looked, and it wouldn't have leapt over other fast-growing cities since.

LA's residential density is impressive in some ways, but not for DTLA.

[craigs]

The article puts downtown's residential population at 90,000.

Wikipedia adopts a 2013 Los Angeles Times definition of downtown at 5.84 square miles (image below), which includes vast swathes that are entirely devoid of residential uses.


Downtown map as delineated by the Los Angeles Times (via Wikipedia)

So that population spread over that geography works out to 15,411 persons per square mile. But--again--the vast majority of residential units in downtown LA are contained within a small fraction of that larger area.