Saturday, February 28, 2009

LA Transportation: Part 1 - Sprawl

A follow up to this New York Times Transporation Post.....this article is the first in the six article series.... "Sprawl"

"In a previous post I challenged you to identify which of six common stereotypes about transportation and land use in Los Angeles is actually true. The first is that Los Angeles has developed in a low-density, sprawling pattern.

Answer: False.

As of the 2000 census, the Los Angeles region’s urbanized area had the highest population density in the nation. Yes, that was the word “highest,” not a smudge on your monitor. At 7,068 people per square mile, Los Angeles is considerably denser than New York-Newark, which ranks fourth at 5,309 people per square mile (behind San Francisco-Oakland and San Jose as well as Los Angeles). How could this be?
Facts and Fiction

Eric Morris discusses stereotypes about Los Angeles transportation in this six-part series.

* Los Angeles Transportation: Facts and Fiction, Introduction

It is true that Los Angeles’s downtown disappoints, especially when compared with such thriving urban cores as Midtown Manhattan, Downtown San Francisco, or Chicago’s Loop. See this paper from my U.C.L.A. colleagues Donald Shoup and Michael Manville for more on this phenomenon and why it may have occurred......"

read the rest of the article here....

(via New York Times Opinion)