Urban form of Los Angeles [Was: reply to gotta speakup...]

[nec209]

Gotta Speakup
Los Angeles and other sunbelt cities do have creeks and rivers that are worth protecting. The LA river is the site of a major restoration process. Even desert land has beauties and things worth preserving.

I made other thread has I do not want to highjack this thread .I have done some reading about Los Angeles and if I'm right Los Angeles was bub for car makers ,shipping and the war effort. Much of south LA , East LA , South central ,watts was built before the 50's but San Fernando valley 50's and 60's and much newer. Well Los Angeles much on like other cities had lot of blacks and hispanics moving in the 20's , 30, and 40's . Doing that time houses where small ,lots where small , single tent stores. And segregation and ghetto zoning laws where blacks and the poor where not allowed to move out of the poor area.

And Los Angeles having only 11,183 people in 1880 and being a hub for car makers was plan city that one day car ownership will take over so they built with small 1 story store-fronts ,parking in the back or side ,tight parking ,small plaza ,underground parking ,and some areas parking on the roof , store almost at the street , little plaza . And that is why LA does not look old or new but doing the transition to car ownership .Well Los Angeles gives you that feel it was plan of transition to car ownership. Has Toronto and other cities in Canada it is old or new .

I think because land value was cheaper in the sun belt cities they built 1 story store-front but the North and Norh East was to have store-front with resident above like this..

http://www.thearchitectsinc.com/imag...STOREFRONT.jpg
http://www.swissvalemusic.com/files/...StoreFront.jpg


Also the fact there was earthquakes in LA and cheaper land value may be why they built under 7 story . With apartments under 7 story , 1 story homes and 1 story store-front along with small plaza ,tight lots ,small parking ,parking in the back or side and so on.

Now do to earthquakes proof building they are now buuilding high-rise building down-town.

Well Toronto and North and North East parts of the US and Canada doing 1900' to 1960 land value cost more so they built up more than sprawl out so built store-front with resident above and 15 to 25 story apartments .

Clearly this was not case in North and North East parts of the US and Canada .

http://www.medicaremoron.com/second_...rawl_city8.jpg
http://www.visitingdc.com/images/los-angeles-sprawl.jpg
http://farm1.static.flickr.com/93/22...9f09ac15cb.jpg
http://www.worldofstock.com/slides/TAC4674.jpg
http://www.worldofstock.com/slides/TAC4663.jpg

[Gotta Speakup]

I would add that some believe the spread out nature of LA dates from its extensive street car network that was built before cars became available. Southern Pacific and other street car line operators built lines out to allow them to subdivide their vast land holding around the LA basin. Adding cars on top of this spread out network just encouraged similar type of development.

I am very familiar with West LA because my brother lives out there and I visit him a lot. It is interesting to see how development is slowly changing the area (for the better)/

[Richi]

I

would add that some believe the spread out nature of LA dates from its extensive street car network that was built before cars became available. Southern Pacific and other street car line operators built lines out to allow them to subdivide their vast land holding around the LA basin.

There were two "electric" transit systems in the LA area. One, "Pacific Electric" (not the "steam railroad" Southern Pacific) was an interurban that had +/- 1,000 miles of track all over the area and handled freight as well as passengers. It was commonly refered to as the "Red Cars". The other was a street car company commonly called the "yellow cars". All were pulled up and many miles of ROW converted to vehicle lanes. Now, of course they have started to rebuild electric transit at great cost. I can't swear to this but I have heard that one PE tunnel would have been ideal for the new system, except that a tall building was built on top of the ridge and the pilings to support it were driven down through the tunnel. So another had to be driven. Progress!

[Gotta Speakup]

The tracks on Santa Monica Boulevard were only pulled up a couple of years ago, two at the most!

[nec209]

Other thing I find are less commercial development in the suburbs out side the main city.

Is there such a thing has commercial restriction zoning? After looking at some cities I find the suburbs to have less commercial development mostly homes and factories.

Is it because the built environment? That say a suburb of LA ,Miami ,Phoenix, Denver so on.Does the main city not allow other cities around it to build commercial development so put up commercial restriction zoning .


Like the city of LA or city of Miami will tell other cities around it to put up commercial restriction zoning but they cannot do this to satellite comunities.

I'm just confued cities that had a little population before 50's seem to have less commercial development than cities that had a bigger population before the 50's on less it was city by self like Vegas or the Miami metro .

I'm having very hard time explaining my thoughts in this post here.

How much commercial development should there be for population of 50 ,000 or 100,000 ?

[nec209]

It has been over a month and still no reply here.Does it have do with auto-centic city ,zoning law or just different city?

Canada seem to have built alot of malls in the 60's , 70's ,80's so on .Where the US built alot of plazas.

Take Las Vegas they have alot of plazas every where.

[Rygor]

It has been over a month and still no reply here.Does it have do with auto-centic city ,zoning law or just different city?

All of the above.

Canada seem to have built alot of malls in the 60's , 70's ,80's so on .Where the US built alot of plazas.

Take Las Vegas they have alot of plazas every where.

Las Vegas has a lot of plazas because much of it was built for large amounts of tourists. Get away from the strip and downtown and I don't think you'll find many (if any) more plazas than any other similar sized city.

[nec209]

Las Vegas has a lot of plazas because much of it was built for large amounts of tourists. Get away from the strip and downtown and I don't think you'll find many (if any) more plazas than any other similar sized city.

It not just Las Vegas if you look at lots of cities in the US they have alot more cermercial development than Canada.I do not know why may be because Canada built alot of malls in the 60's , 70's and 80's and alot of US cities building plazas ? Or I'm not understanding some thing . Has one city poulation in Canada 200,000 has more cermercial development than a city population 1,000,000 !!

Check Miami-Dade County and Broward County lots and lots of plazas ( almost every other artery ) has in Canada not much .I don't know if this is zoning law to cout down on cermercial development every where or suburbs out of main city have less cermercial development to cought down on it every where.Canada does seem to have more malls and US more plazas .

[tpolk]

nec, can you learn how to write. i feel like im reading a third graders paper

[kalimotxo]

nec, can you learn how to write. i feel like im reading a third graders paper

This is pathetic, especially for a first post. Did you register here just to cut someone down for their writing? If so, you could have at least taken the time to edit your two sentence post, which from my count has no less than five errors.

[DetroitPlanner]

This is pathetic, especially for a first post. Did you register here just to cut someone down for their writing? If so, you could have at least taken the time to edit your two sentence post, which from my count has no less than five errors.

I count seven! I was thinking the same thing.

[Gotta Speakup]

Think how I feel! I have a bit of responsibility for this thread.

[Brocktoon]

Other thing I find are less commercial development in the suburbs out side the main city.

Is there such a thing has commercial restriction zoning? After looking at some cities I find the suburbs to have less commercial development mostly homes and factories.

Is it because the built environment? That say a suburb of LA ,Miami ,Phoenix, Denver so on.Does the main city not allow other cities around it to build commercial development so put up commercial restriction zoning .

Sorry, I just found this thread. I can only speak for Phoenix and most of the jobs in the Valley are spread out in the eastern suburbs and the center city. Unlike Chicago and other large cities of similar size Phoenix central business district is not the large employment hub. In Chicago downtown has 20% of the regions jobs, in Phoenix it is approximately 5%. Other job centers in the Phoenix metro is Chandler where a lot of the high tech manufacturing jobs are located, Scottsdale Airpark, Camelback Corridor and in Tempe around Arizona State University.

Arizona is a strong property rights states. The problem here is that land owners have developed prime industrial lands for single family homes. I cannot tell you how many housing developments back up to a rail line. Phoenix cannot restrict what Tempe or Glendale builds. In fact in Scottsdale a developer wanted to build a dense mixed use project and go above Scottsdales height restricts and Scottsdale would not grant a variance. So the developer bought the land across the street in Phoenix and built his project with the density they desired.