The Destructive "Low Density L.A." Myth

[softee]

Originally Posted by yaletown_fella

I dont understand why the LA-Toronto comparision is that farfetched.

Both are predominantly lo-rise multicultural cities with a strong car culture but experiencing an increase of condominium developments centered around multi-nodular commercial cores. Likewise in Vancouver and SF, a lot of the rich culture has migrated the "ethnoburbs"

North York City Centre is strikingly similar to Century City. MCC/Northern Mississauga is similar to Anaheim/Orange county with its dense cookie cutter development.

With the exception of ultra-rich urban NYC, most people in the GTA and LA buy in bulk and benefit from car dependant "power centers", lifestyle centers, and malls close to highways (Like I mentioned, Toronto's Yorkdale is one the highest grossing mall in N.A)

What perplexes me is comparing Toronto to NYC. We're nowhere near their wealth, density, history and scope. We only really rival east coast cities in SFH architecture.

LA also has a rich array of Art Deco architecture that is often more condusive to lo-rise surroundings and nature/greenery. It's a unique aesthetic that's undervalued on a skyscraper enthusiast website.

^ Toronto's core is far more built up and dominant over the metro area than is LA's core. Transit usage in Toronto and the GTA is far higher than in LA.

Only 26% of dwellings in the City of Toronto are detached single family houses, while 41% of dwellings in the city of Toronto are in apartment buildings with 5 or more storeys.

In Old Toronto only 12% of dwellings are detached Houses and 46.9% of dwellings are in apartment buildings with 5 or more storeys.

http://www1.toronto.ca/City%20Of%20T...ile%202011.pdf

These figures are from 2011, many thousands of new hi-rise dwellings have been built since then.

[lio45]

Originally Posted by SHiRO

Yes you are basically using nonsense numbers which include the entire area under the administration of Greater London. When, if you were only a little interested in the truth you should be using the density of the build up area and not include forests, farmland, golfcourses and airports.

More or less agree. If a city's urban fabric is peppered with golf courses and airports and parks, you can't ignore that -- it does contribute to making density lower.

Using the same logic, for a tall residential tower "in a park" or surrounded by a sea of street-level parking, the accurate measurement of density is to take the area of the whole lot, not merely the area of the footprint of the tower.

That's why a block of tightly-packed multi-story rowhouses might actually be denser than a block that has one much taller tower in a park.

Sure, if you exclude the park, and only count the tower, the tower is more dense, obviously... but that's not the correct way to look at it.

Note that it's obviously up for debate where exactly to draw the line. For example, Los Angeles' municipal boundaries include a fairly large state park; it would be logical to exclude that from density calculations. On the other hand, if a neighborhood has a golf course smack dab in the middle of it, it's actually a lower density neighborhood than if that golf course wasn't there, you can't just remove the golf course from the calculation.

Central Park in NYC -- if it was sold off in parcels and got thoroughly covered with new buildings that match the current average density of Manhattan, would you seriously be arguing with a straight face that Manhattan didn't get any denser "because Central Park was previously excluded from the density calculation and didn't count" ?

Crawford, you are not really interested or knowledgable about this stuff, you just want to argue and troll. Have you ever made a post here that didn't met with opposition from other forumers?

You know, that exact same question could be directed to you -- it looks like you absolutely always get into heated arguments whenever you post...

[memph]

Originally Posted by SHiRO

It's hard to imagen the level of ignorance one must possess to make the claim that London is less dense than 40-45 US cities.

London is more dense than anywhere in the US/Canada except Manhattan and Brooklyn. And guess what, since London is adding 120,000 people a year, it is soon going to overtake Brooklyn as well.


Yes you are basically using nonsense numbers which include the entire area under the administration of Greater London. When, if you were only a little interested in the truth you should be using the density of the build up area and not include forests, farmland, golfcourses and airports.

Or alternatively, don't be a hypocrite and do the same for NYC and include everything under its administration as well.


But it's more dense than anywhere in the US/Canada but NYC.


Toulouse, Strasbourg...NEXT!


Yeah really not. Not in an apples to apples comparison anyway. I'd be surprised if there were more than five.

EDIT- Did a quick calculation:

New York City 10,800 p/km2 (28,000 ppsm)
San Francisco 7,100 p/km2 (18,500 ppsm)*
Berlin 6,160 p/km2 (16,000 ppsm)
Boston 5,340 p/km2 (13,800 ppsm)
Chicago 4,620 p/km2 (12,000 ppsm)
Philadelphia 4,520 p/km2 (11,700 ppsm)
Miami 4,300 p/km2 (11,100 ppsm)
Washington DC 4,250 p/km2 (11,000 ppsm)

Please tell us what are the other 98 cities in the US more dense than Berlin?
* Plus it is more than probable that like LA, Berlin has a smaller area than the city of SF that exceeds SF's population within its city limits. In other words, not even SF is really more dense than Berlin!



Crawford, you are not really interested or knowledgable about this stuff, you just want to argue and troll. Have you ever made a post here that didn't met with opposition from other forumers?

https://chartingtransport.com/2015/1...ropean-cities/

Weighted density of Berlin and London urban areas are higher than any US or Canadian urban area other than NYC, so... yup.

Anyways, I'm still not 100% convinced that LA is more crowded than other large cities with lots of immigrants like NYC, Toronto or Miami. Perhaps LA just has larger household sizes as an adaptation to the housing stock that skews more towards single family homes whereas NYC has more small apartments that would not accommodate extended family or room-mate arrangements as well.

And still, even the neighbourhoods that are "SFH in character" like the south and east side still have a large number of apartments. Mostly 2-4 unit apartments that blend into SFH lined streets, as well as a lot of 1-4 unit "accessory structures" at the backs of lots, bungalow courts, etc.

LA County's household sizes are only 8% higher than the Toronto CMA's, 1% lower than Miami-Dade's, 6% higher than Harris County's, and only 6% higher than the Bronx's and 10% higher than Brooklyn's, both of which I certainly expect have small average unit sizes. Even if you made a 5-10% adjustment to LA's neighbourhood densities, it would still be quite a bit denser than typical suburbia.

[SHiRO]

Originally Posted by lio45

More or less agree. If a city's urban fabric is peppered with golf courses and airports and parks, you can't ignore that -- it does contribute to making density lower.

Using the same logic, for a tall residential tower "in a park" or surrounded by a sea of street-level parking, the accurate measurement of density is to take the area of the whole lot, not merely the area of the footprint of the tower.

That's why a block of tightly-packed multi-story rowhouses might actually be denser than a block that has one much taller tower in a park.

Sure, if you exclude the park, and only count the tower, the tower is more dense, obviously... but that's not the correct way to look at it.

Note that it's obviously up for debate where exactly to draw the line. For example, Los Angeles' municipal boundaries include a fairly large state park; it would be logical to exclude that from density calculations. On the other hand, if a neighborhood has a golf course smack dab in the middle of it, it's actually a lower density neighborhood than if that golf course wasn't there, you can't just remove the golf course from the calculation.

Central Park in NYC -- if it was sold off in parcels and got thoroughly covered with new buildings that match the current average density of Manhattan, would you seriously be arguing with a straight face that Manhattan didn't get any denser "because Central Park was previously excluded from the density calculation and didn't count" ?

Berlin nor any European city has its urban fabric peppered with golfcourses and airports. Lots of European cities have green belts (including Berlin and London) with actual forests, lakes and farmland which are obviously not part of the urban fabric. There are hard lines that seperate urban from rural, even if some of that rural is under the administration of the city. Now it would be intelectually dishonest (and thus right up Crawford's alley) to include these rural areas in the urban density statistics.

Your tower in the park example is besides the point, noone is advocating subtracting those kind of areas, or in fact urban parks from the statistics.

[lio45]

Originally Posted by Crawford

Couldn't the same be said for virtually every metro area in North America?

"Minneapolis and Calgary and Atlanta and Austin and Detroit and Ottawa are all predominantly lo-rise multicultural cities with a strong car culture but experiencing an increase of condominium developments centered around multi-nodular commercial cores. Likewise in Vancouver and SF, a lot of the rich culture has migrated the "ethnoburbs"

The multi-nodal thing (a feature of both LA and Toronto), on that one I would say he's correct and you're not. For example, Calgary is a unicity (no holes in the city area + satellite towns have been gobbled up) and has pretty much only one core (notwithstanding the long-lived SSP running gag that there could be said to be two poles: downtown Calgary, and downtown Okotoks).

Now, sure, if Okotoks's skyline was more like Mississauga's, yep, metro Calgary would be a multi-nodal city.

I'm pretty sure Austin, Ottawa are both pretty "centralized" cities as well.

MN Twin Cities by very definition are multi- (i.e. at least bi-) nodal, so sure, I'll grant you that one. Same thing with DFW and the SF Bay Area.

[memph]

Originally Posted by softee

^ Toronto's core is far more built up and dominant over the metro area than is LA's core. Transit usage in Toronto and the GTA is far higher than in LA.

Only 26% of dwellings in the City of Toronto are detached single family houses, while 41% of dwellings in the city of Toronto are in apartment buildings with 5 or more storeys.

In Old Toronto only 12% of dwellings are detached Houses and 46.9% of dwellings are in apartment buildings with 5 or more storeys.

http://www1.toronto.ca/City%20Of%20T...ile%202011.pdf

These figures are from 2011, many thousands of new hi-rise dwellings have been built since then.

The % of SFH homes (attached and detached) is almost identical in both metro areas, although it's true that there are still major differences in the housing stock of the two cities.

[dc_denizen]

Originally Posted by ChargerCarl

IMO the real low hanging fruit is up zoning all the single family neighborhoods on the west side. It's fucking nuts that we allow them to persist, this is the most desirable real estate in all of Southern California.

I don't see why you have to rezone single family homes. You could build tens of thousands of units just at arterial intersections, places where today there are only gas stations and mini marts

[dc_denizen]

Originally Posted by memph

The % of SFH homes (attached and detached) is almost identical in both metro areas, although it's true that there are still major differences in the housing stock of the two cities.

Toronto is severely lacking in prewar multi family housing, but had a lot more 1960s buildout. Also small apartments seem less common than semi detached homes

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by SHiRO

It's hard to imagen the level of ignorance one must possess to make the claim that London is less dense than 40-45 US cities.

It's amazing, but some of us actually prefer Census based data to form our worldview. You don't like peer-reviewed data, I guess, so refuse to accept that 40-45 U.S. cities have higher density than London per official U.S. and UK population stats.

Originally Posted by SHiRO

London is more dense than anywhere in the US/Canada except Manhattan and Brooklyn.

You keep saying this, it doesn't mean it's true. London is much less dense than all the major NYC boroughs, and about 40-45 U.S. cities.

Originally Posted by SHiRO

And guess what, since London is adding 120,000 people a year, it is soon going to overtake Brooklyn as well.

And by "soon" you mean "almost certainly never", right?

Brooklyn has a density of 37,000 per square mile and London has a density of 14,000 per square mile. London and Brooklyn have almost the exact same annual growth rate, BTW.

So, under current growth rates, London will never close the giant density gap with Brooklyn. It won't even close the gap with Queens, to say nothing of the Bronx and Manhattan.

Originally Posted by SHiRO

Yes you are basically using nonsense numbers which include the entire area under the administration of Greater London. When, if you were only a little interested in the truth you should be using the density of the build up area and not include forests, farmland, golfcourses and airports.

Ah, yes. There are no "forest farmland, golf courses and airports" in American cities, therefore we can't make a comparison with the UK. Only British cities have such things...

Originally Posted by SHiRO

Or alternatively, don't be a hypocrite and do the same for NYC and include everything under its administration as well.

Yes, I'm happy to do so. NYC has more than twice the density of London overall.

Originally Posted by SHiRO

But it's more dense than anywhere in the US/Canada but NYC

And about 45 U.S. cities and about 10 Canadian cities.

Originally Posted by SHiRO

Toulouse, Strasbourg...NEXT!

Yes, London is slightly denser than Strasbourg and Toulouse, two smaller French cities, one that was built as a German city. Doesn't mean that London is dense. I never claimed that Germanic cities were dense, or that London was less dense than every city in Europe.

Originally Posted by SHiRO

Please tell us what are the other 98 cities in the US more dense than Berlin?

Sure thing:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o...lation_density

If Berlin were in the U.S. it would be somewhere between 90-100 in terms of density.

Originally Posted by SHiRO

Crawford, you are not really interested or knowledgable about this stuff, you just want to argue and troll. Have you ever made a post here that didn't met with opposition from other forumers?

I'm sorry if posting Census data is "trolling" in your eyes. I cannot control the opinions or actions of others.

[lio45]

Originally Posted by SHiRO

Berlin nor any European city has its urban fabric peppered with golfcourses and airports. Lots of European cities have green belts (including Berlin and London) with actual forests and farmland which are obviously not part of the urban fabric. There are hard lines that seperate urban from rural, even if some of that rural is under the administration of the city. Now it would be intelectually dishonest (and thus right up Crawford's alley) to include these rural areas in the urban density statistics.

Your tower in the park example is ridiculous and besides the point, noone is advocating subtracting those kind of areas, or in fact urban parks from the statistics.

FYI, I made sure I said that I more or less agreed with you there, which is obviously not the same thing as disagreeing. You explicitly mentioned golf courses and airports, so I brought up the point that those are a grey area, and that it's not so clear how exactly to treat those.

For example, I wouldn't remove Mtl's Dorval airport from density calculations. It's on the island, and within the urban fabric. It's a continuum between that and a fully exurban airport in the middle of cultivated fields (like Mtl's Mirabel airport) so there has to be an arbitrary place to draw a line somewhere.

And even greenbelts are not always so clear. If you have plenty of Londoners living in this countryside and commuting daily into the city, I can see how one could say the density of Greater London is lower than if these people -- who are truly Londoners for all intents and purposes -- were instead living in the heart of the city.

If you ignore the fact that Londoners are driven to sprawl themselves into the greenbelt for various reasons, you're going to miss part of the picture.

In the SSP Canada section a point that often gets discussed is how hard it is to compare metro areas apples to apples in different countries. If Americans have a better tolerance for commuting, and tend to prefer to live in sprawl, is it fair/logical to have metro areas that are larger in area? (IMO, the answer is "yes".)

Please continue.

I don't see why I would need to add anything...? It was just a question, and was clear and straightforward.

[ChargerCarl]

Originally Posted by dc_denizen

I don't see why you have to rezone single family homes. You could build tens of thousands of units just at arterial intersections, places where today there are only gas stations and mini marts

Well those are the lots that would be the most affordable to develop. Affordable new construction generally takes the form of lower rise, wood construction apartment buildings and small townhouses. Sure, we could fit a lot people on just arterials, but if we want broad affordability we need to a rezoning of SFR neighborhoods.

[ThePhun1]

Originally Posted by dktshb

I am sorry to burst your bubble in which you feel ThePhun is the one who determines what density is in a "traditional sense." Density is a measurement and not a state of mind. All you need to do is look at statistics. Los Angeles succeeded the population of San Francisco in the 1920's and was the 5th largest city in the US in the 1930 census long before tract home neighborhoods and strip malls were introduced to every American city. Los Angeles had a population of over 1.2 million people in the 1930 census a city with 400 thousand more people than Boston when the San Fernando Valley was orange groves. The San Fernando Valley "America's first suburb" stared with earnest in the 1940's.

Anyway, the true sun belt cities in the 1930 Census....

Houston 292K;
Dallas 260k;
Atlanta's population 237K

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1930_United_States_Census
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1930_United_States_Census

Burst my bubble? I don't know what any of that had to do with my point. LA may have pre-war bones unlike most SB cities but it's still not dense in a traditional sense no matter what statistics you pull.

If it was, you'd be able to basically walk to every point of interest (for citizenry, tourism and general interest.) and factors like traffic would be minor as it is in some other cities such as in NYC/Manhattan. People act like you're insulting their mother if you don't view their city the way they want. And I thought Houston people were bad.

[hammersklavier]

Originally Posted by CaliNative

Density is density--so what if its because of "poor migrants"? There are neighborhoods of S.F. filled with "poor migrants" as well. Mission, Chinatown etc.

This is not at all true. What you're describing is not density in a positive manner. It's overcrowding -- that is, what you're talking about is people sacrificing privacy in order to make numbers work.

[lio45]

ChargerCarl, the broader question of whether to exclude barren areas from municipal areas, and where to draw the line, is in fact very relevant to the OP and Los Angeles' density calculation. The "official" density figure for the city includes a good chunk of the Santa Monica mountains, does it not? (Making it seem lower than the reality on the ground.)

[ChargerCarl]

Originally Posted by lio45

ChargerCarl, the broader question of whether to exclude barren areas from municipal areas, and where to draw the line, is in fact very relevant to the OP and Los Angeles' density calculation. The "official" density figure for the city includes a good chunk of the Santa Monica mountains, does it not? (Making it seem lower than the reality on the ground.)

I think it all misses the point a bit. Especially the YUROP vs USA crap.

[hammersklavier]

Originally Posted by lio45

ChargerCarl, the broader question of whether to exclude barren areas from municipal areas, and where to draw the line, is in fact very relevant to the OP and Los Angeles' density calculation. The "official" density figure for the city includes a good chunk of the Santa Monica mountains, does it not? (Making it seem lower than the reality on the ground.)

Originally Posted by ChargerCarl

I think it all misses the point a bit. Especially the YUROP vs USA crap.

LA is a little unusual in that the mountains that ring its basin -- the Santa Monica and Teachapi ranges -- essentially functions as a large greenbelt under the European model (although, unlike the European model, AFAIK the mountains proper aren't protected for some reason). Geography hems LA in and constrains its land supply.

[CaliNative]

Originally Posted by hammersklavier

LA is a little unusual in that the mountains that ring its basin -- the Santa Monica and Teachapi ranges -- essentially functions as a large greenbelt under the European model (although, unlike the European model, AFAIK the mountains proper aren't protected for some reason). Geography hems LA in and constrains its land supply.

True. Also true that the undeveloped mountains are partly in the L.A. city limits, so they lower the "official" overall density figures for the city. If we look at density in the built area, L.A. would probably be above 10,000/sq. mile overall. Of course, there are neighborhoods with 40,000+ (Koreatown etc.) as myself & others have pointed out.

[dktshb]

Originally Posted by ThePhun1

Burst my bubble? I don't know what any of that had to do with my point. LA may have pre-war bones unlike most SB cities but it's still not dense in a traditional sense no matter what statistics you pull.

If it was, you'd be able to basically walk to every point of interest (for citizenry, tourism and general interest.) and factors like traffic would be minor as it is in some other cities such as in NYC/Manhattan. People act like you're insulting their mother if you don't view their city the way they want. And I thought Houston people were bad.

Yeah, density is measured by being able to walk to every point of interest in a city and traffic as opposed to actual statistics that measure density.

[Quixote]

Originally Posted by dc_denizen

I don't see why you have to rezone single family homes. You could build tens of thousands of units just at arterial intersections, places where today there are only gas stations and mini marts

I've got a better idea. We could construct those tens of thousands of units within the Downtown loop, where land and transit infrastructure are more abundant and NIMBY opposition less fierce. This is a logical solution that is both doable and has legs underneath it.


https://www.flickr.com/photos/geoffd...527514/sizes/l

[ChargerCarl]

Originally Posted by Quixote

I've got a better idea. We could construct those tens of thousands of units within the Downtown loop, where land and transit infrastructure are more abundant and NIMBY opposition less fierce. This is a logical solution that is both doable and has legs underneath it.

[IM]https://c2.staticflickr.com/2/1719/24886527514_defdfd349a_b.jpg[/IMG]
https://www.flickr.com/photos/geoffd...527514/sizes/l

Sure, and that will help, but only marginally. Affordability is a regional problem. Downtown will never be able to accomadate regional demand. Fighting LA's polycentric nature is a losing battle, and not even one I'd want us to win.