La is a wasted opportunity
Thursday, 13 Mar 2025
Exclusive insights, data, and analysis for financial market experts.
Search
Have an existing account?
Sign In
Sadly like many other cities in the US, walk ability is an afterthought. I live in a moderately sized city (400k+) and walk ability is terrible half the streets don’t even have sidewalks
I love visiting LA. I would however not like to live there.
It’s actually pleasant to walk around parts of LA compared to a lot of car centric rural towns. There are all sorts of cool cuddy pathways with little gardens everywhere despite what people think.
It’s the age old comparison of pre planned cities vs organically grown cities. It’s why Phoenix (literally planned as a grid like it’s from Tron) looks so drastically different than Boston. More about age than climate
Despite the highly suburban character of LA, it’s actually the [#1 most dense “Urban Area” in the US (as defined by the census bureau)](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_urban_areas). It lacks a major urban core, but the suburbs themselves are significantly and consistently more dense. Lot sizes are fairly small throughout LA so they still fit a lot more housing across the region than anywhere else.
Obviously, downtown LA doesn’t come close to something like Manhattan (nothing in the US does). But on a regional level, LA wipes the floor with NYC on density; once you get past the boroughs, NYC suburbs are full of big houses on big lots and pull the average density down a lot.
Ngl, if you didn’t mention it was LA, I would not know which city in the US this is.
Have you seen real estate prices in LA? People sure love to live there.
I think a clear indicator that someone doesn’t understand LA is talking about it as if it’s a monolith, just one defined city. The whole area of LA is made up of dozens different cities and neighborhoods with their own identities and development history.
Also just for reference:
Total area of Barcelona: 40 miles
Total area of Los Angeles 500 miles.
Comparing Barcelona (an old style small European city) to Los Angeles (a massive city that developed largely in the 20th century) is just silly. They’re different cities developed for different reasons in different time periods.
And for what it’s worth, the many downtown areas of Los Angeles are all pretty walkable and connected by a growing metro network.
The Barcelona metro is at most 5 million people. The LA metro area is 18 million people. Hell, the LA metro area contains like 35% of Spain’s total population.
America ain’t Europe fam
Barcelona is ~2000 years old, depending on how you define the city and its center. LA is about 120 years old.
Give LA a couple more centuries, and it will be high density and walkable as well. It grew up in a time when a combination of new transportation technology and cheap real estate made it easier to go out than up. That will necessarily change.
Redditors sure have a hard on for lack of walkable US cities
Wasted? It’s geography allows it to have one of the best climates in the US and has 10+ million metro area.
Think you meant to post in urban hell?
Some people don’t like dense metropolises. Are those are only two options, dense metropolis or sprawling suburbs?
The area I live in is suburban sprawl mixed with open areas, small towns, neighborhoods with lots of big old trees, plenty of parks, some farmland, woods, creeks, but also shopping malls and industry. To me, it’s a great mix. I wouldn’t trade it for NYC or LA.
It depends on where you live in LA. People shit on LA Metro, but for the most part it’s fine and pretty easy to use and if you’re within the major part of the city limits, things are easy to get to. I’ve lived next to USC, in East Hollywood, and Hollywood proper and the transit system was pretty useful, plus there was a lot within walking distance. If you live in the burbs that aren’t Long Beach, NoHo, or out towards Azusa tho you have to drive
As usual you don’t understand Los Angeles. In the United States only New York City has that kind of density. But Los Angeles one of the most dense cities after New York. If you want suburban sprawl go to Phoenix. Los Angeles has plenty of walkable neighborhoods
This sounds like someone who has never been to LA. “Perfect Climate”? LA was built on practically desert with billions needing to be invested in water infrastracture to support the population.
And yes, shocker, the city that developed in tandem with the growth of the automobile and the oil industry is a car-centric city.
Im all for dreaming, but there is a reason why Barcelona is the way it is, and LA is the way it is.
Every time I’m in LA I have the same feeling. Imagine a city with this weather with good public transport and bike lanes. Dense neighbourhoods with a lot going on. Such a missed opportunity.Â
LA is moving in the right direction, becoming more dense. Yes it is sprawling.
LA is awesome. Westside is amazing. Bike paths growing everywhere. ADU laws changed. Transit is improving. Big place but it’s evolving.
LA started as an oil field
TF you talking about opportunity?
**La is a wasted opportunity**
Of course that has nothing to do with that many people living there now?
Funnily enough this picture has two different modes of public transport – the J line bus on the 110 express lanes & C Line metro along the 105 median.
Born and raised outside LA. It’s a bit more complicated than that. Also, American cities have always had (modern aspects of livability) as an afterthought. American cities were at times *literally* built around highways/the need for cars, specifically during the 1950s.
Haters gonna hate. It’s 51 degrees in LA at 7:30 AM today on December 26th with a high of 65. Have fun shoveling snow. Lets go Lakers!!!!
lol well yeah nowhere in America do you not need a car tho. Our country is built on the highway system. Btw Barcelona could never see the amount of money LA sees in just one year lol
The majority of the country is, when it comes to transportation. The fact that we still dont have high speed rail from city to city is insane. There are people who will say “just take a flight”… like bro, as someone who spent a month in Japan, taking high speed rail is the FUTURE.
Louisiana? Yeah it sucks.
That’s the GTA interchange
Well that’s the difference when a city is founded over 3000 years ago, and modernized 80 years ago
Just wait til you see Dallas
I don’t think people understand scale when talking about the U.S. Los Angeles and Barcelona are not even remotely comparable. Barcelona is 39 square miles and Los Angeles is 503 square miles.
LA might be one of the best metro areas in the country if you don’t have a massive car-based commute. The buses are pretty decent, light rail needs another expansion though. Lots of cultural density and beauty in the region.
City of Quartz by Mike Davis is an incredible excavation of the city and its history. I’d recommend it to anyone interested in the region
We couldn’t build up, had to build out due to earthquakes. There is no way we could ever have a walkable city. Couldn’t really do an effective underground subway, back in the day, due to earthquake fears….so, the only transportation was buses….
They do have bike and bus lanes, but it just a spread out city….and, like most Americans….we have to have our cars
I’m a Chicagoan here and I don’t think you guys are giving LA enough credit. Large swaths of it are quite walkable and pleasant, and the transit is better than most US cities. I consider it one of the more walkable cities.
Have a little optimism. The city is getting denser for sure. Drive around Silverlake, Echo Park and note how many multifamily buildings are going up. And how much work has been done on downtown the past decade.Â
Similarly they are expanding the metro lines, including the one to LAX which I’m really excited about.
LA has beautiful pockets, its not all ugly. The neighborhoods around the foothills are beautiful, as well as some of the beach cities like Manhattan Beach.Â
If you’re thinking in terms of great architecture, LA has that too, but its different because LA is not from the same century as Barcelona (although the LA pueblo is 1830’s ish). Kind of apples and oranges.Â
Many neighborhoods have bike lanes, both by the beach and the neighborhoods in the northeast corridor.Â
Lastly, LA is such a massive area. Barcelona has 1.6m people and 101.4 sqkm. Compared to LA’s 3.9m people and 1214.9 sqkm. Thats more than 10x the land. What works at one scale doesn’t always translate to a higher scale. I look at it as a major luxury having the benefits of a city (culture, food, etc) while still feeling a sense of space.Â
LA is awesome. Get off the freeway at any point and you get to enjoy a whole different city and probably culture. And it ends at the beach or the mountains.,
Barcelona is located on the northeast coast of the Iberian Peninsula, facing the Mediterranean Sea, on a plain approximately 5 km (3 mi) wide limited by the mountain range of Collserola, the Llobregat river to the southwest and the Besòs river to the north.[73] **This plain covers an area of 170 km2 (66 sq mi)**,[73] of which 101 km2 (39.0 sq mi)[74] are occupied by the city itself. It is 120 km (75 mi) south of the Pyrenees and the Catalan border with France.
The city of Los Angeles **covers a total area of 502.7 square miles (1,302 km2)**, comprising 468.7 square miles (1,214 km2) of land and 34.0 square miles (88 km2) of water. The city extends for 44 miles (71 km) from north to south and for 29 miles (47 km) from east to west.
So, 502sq miles vs 66sq miles. Very important to mention that this is just the city of Los Angeles, not the entire Los Angeles-Anaheim-Riverside statistical urban area, which is **2,281 square miles (5,910 km2)**
My point being, American cities are not dense because they do not have to be. They developed in areas that do not have the geographical limitations that European cities do, simply because everything, including natural areas of flat land, is bigger in North America. Comparing the two ultimately makes no sense. When you have enough room for everyone to get their own little plot of land, they’ll probably be inclined to take it.
Profound. You are the first person to ever have these thoughts.
How is LA wasted opportunity? I’m going to guess you know very little about the city currently. And you have zero idea about its history as well. LA is car culture and Americans like cars.
How I’d love to Cities: Skylines to fix this map
Living here is far better than visiting here, that’s for sure (if you can find the right neighborhood). It’s just too big and spread out to enjoy in a short time. And most people don’t really get to touch the best part of SoCal, the mountains, when they visit. Far more people need to go for a hike when they come. We’re heading toward density, slowly. In 50 years, it will look much more like a European city.
Not everyone wants to live in 10 story apartment buildings, stacked on top of each other. Some people like to have a yard and some space
What does this even have to do with geography this is just a cityshot shitpost id expect to see on urbanhell.
Wasted in what way?
I lived in Barcelona for a year, the density there is way too high, and the city is not really that walkable… Overcrowded streets, with both people and cars/scooters/busses, overcrowded public transportation all the time, barely any parks or green areas within the city.
LA was built the way it is because the market (the home buying public, not their cars) demanded single family detached housing. The car just enabled that demand. But it was personal preference and the availability of raw land that drove it. Same thing drives the sprawl in most American cities. I don’t argue that the result is ugly and soulless when looking at it from an airplane but at street level it can be very attractive especially if you’re one of the homeowners.