Walking in L.A.

My dogs are barkin just thinking about it.

Because unlike London, there is really only 100 years of development in this city. It's much older but if you look at old photos, Santa Monica used to be "far away" and Hollywood used to just be orchards. LA is really more like many small towns growing into a very large city. Each neighborhood has its own identity.

Because it's not as dense. But it still has lots and lots of lovely neighborhoods and places to walk. You just need to drive between them. The view of L.A. from Mulholland Drive at night made me realize how truely immense L.A. is.

edit: according to Google. "L.A. area" is 503 sq miles. "London area" is 607 sq miles. Interesting.

My guess is it has something to do with [1]. I remember growing up hearing that LA was planned by a large automotive manufacturer, hence it requires copious amounts of driving to fully experience the city. I couldn't find a reliable source with any cursory searching. Still, the linked article mentions LA specifically in one of the captions, so maybe there's a grain of truth to that.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automotive_city

Viewing it from a bike at night reveals more character: http://www.thepassageride.com/Photos

Instead of the explanation you've asked the internet for, you might find a visit to L.A., to clear up your puzzlement, more rewarding.

Except downtown LA, and some other isolated spots, there isn't much architectural beauty. Most of the city just feels like roads, box-shaped buildings, and strip-malls with ugly signs. At night, when it lights up, it has a certain charm that you do not find during the day. However, I have seen very few urban landscapes as beautiful as when the sun sets behind a horizon cut by its palm tree silhouettes. It is a city one loves more for its vibe and endless possibilities, and for the nature that surrounds it, than for its architectural beauty.

Because it was developed in very large tracts due to being in the desert and needing to import water. So, the financing only made sense if you developed large, spawling areas. This was true before cars were popular, when there was a tram and people took the tram and then walked everywhere. Then cars became popular, I think the tram died and now you have to take the freeway to get anywhere.

I'll concede that LA might lack a true urban identity since it can be very disjointed, although even this is debatable if you spend some time in the historic core, but I'm not sure I would say it's featureless. The mountains to the north and the ocean to the west make for a pretty dramatic cityscape, along with the Wilshire corridor[1] and downtown. LA also tends to look great at night, particularly from the air[2].

Hopefully the LA River revitalization goes according to plan and it can be better integrated with the neighborhoods it runs through[3].

[1]http://www.lanebarden.com/linear-city-wilshire-boulevard/

[2]http://www.michaellight.net/new-gallery-1/

[3]http://www.changkimphoto.com/where-the-water-once-flowed-la-...

The worst part is the freeways and they are the worst way to see the city. I always find myself wishing they'd dismantle most of them and force the city to evolve without them.

All the distinctive elements of LA have been packaged and sold to you through Hollywood films, to the point where it's actually a bit shocking to see some of the landmarks in person for the first time, because you didn't think of them as actual places.

On the ground, most parts of LA don't look like anywhere in particular because they're too low rise and you can't see the horizon either. But there are some tells in certain of the neighborhoods: besides highways and palm trees, many blocks have "courtyard apartment" construction. The landscape favors autos but not in the same way as a city like Atlanta, favoring a regular grid with sidewalks over cul-de-sac deadends. With so much of the development spanning a brief period in the 20th century(by the 70's laments for "old LA" were common) there isn't a great deal of history. San Francisco contrasts as a city that has had fires and reconstruction in its core, but if you go out to the western parts of town or a bit down the peninsula, it's all recognizable as being of the same generation as many of those LA suburbs.

I'm going to assume you have never been to LA.

Just like London it is a collection of "villages". What were originally separate cities: Santa Monica, Hollywood, Pasadena etc have all been absorbed into the whole that is LA. I'm sure you can recognize the same process in london where Hampstead and Stratford have distinct personalities and yet are now both a small part of the whole that is London.

Now LA, unlike London is a city much easier to live in and less easy to experience as a tourist. Tourists try to travel from Malibu to Hollywood boulevard to the Broad museum all in the same day. This is a wonderful way to experience LA traffic. Any person who lives here would recommend you choose on area and spend most of your time experiencing it properly. If you want a walkable neighborhood go to Santa Monica, West Hollywood or Downtown. If you want nature, hiking and to feel like you are not in the city go to Malibu or the Hollywood Hills.

I would argue that all of the LA neighborhoods I mentioned are very familiar to most of us because we watch movies and television and LA is traditionally where those products are made. Maybe you don't watch tv or go to the movies - in that case go to the David Hockney exhibition in london and you will see that LA is one of the most distinctive cities in the world. It is good weather, easy living, good looking inhabitants and it is surrounded by a natural beauty few other cities possess. I could argue it makes London look like a giant rat hole in comparison but to each their own!

I think London has its historic sights and some pretty neighborhoods but the livability of the city is shockingly bad. From crappy housing stock to antiquated tube - I am much happier in LA. But that's just me.

I think part of the attraction of LA is that you can have a wide variety of buildings within a small place. It's a lot of nodes, that rise and lessen in density. If you stay off the freeways, you can see a lot (I've only taken them to get out of the city). It's a young city still trying to figure itself out, kind of like the teenager that will dye their hair a different color every month. There's a lot of ugly shit, a lot of beautiful shit, and lot that varies between those two spectrums. Probably one thing no one told you about is the nature - lots of slightly tamed parks and mountains to hike in as well as fun on the water, if that's your thing.

City of Quartz, by Mike Davis is a good book on the city's architecture.

It's a young city, relatively speaking, and it grew up with the automobile - leading to the infamous sprawl you see today.

It's a city that's meant to be experienced by car (historically), meaning that many things are primarily accessible by car, to the extent that without a car you were basically of another class, kept out of the various "fortresses" (shopping malls, etc.)

Hence the famous song, "nobody walks in LA."

The baseline architecture is pretty bland, admittedly. But what makes LA an awesome city is not so much what is captured in photos but the whole experience of beautiful, sunny weather all year, hill-top views of the massive expansiveness of the LA basin, the mix of suburban vibes within a sprawling metropolis (e.g. you can be on a quiet suburban-style street in Beverly Hills, then go down a couple blocks and you'll be in the middle of bustling Rodeo Drive), and its diversity of people and niches. It's also a far more livable city than cities like San Francisco, especially if you're not rich.

I last visited LA when I was ten years old, I don't remember much apart from it being a huge expanse of tarmac with a few buildings dotted around. It doesn't look far from the truth now, utterly dominated by the car.

> It always looks to me no so much as a city, but rather merely some buildings that are connected by freeways.

I've lived in LA for a number of years, and that's a pretty accurate statement. Also, there are a lot of people and cars.

It's not a livable city. It's basically a big mess.

There are a lot of beautiful places in and around Los Angeles, but you have to search for them. Los Angeles isn't a "wide open" city like other towns, where, as a tourist, you can drop in and just get it. It takes a lot of exploration to figure out.

As an example, you can find areas in Silver Lake that have staircases as streets. I'd hate to be the mail man for that area, but it's pretty interesting to see.

LA is huge, with a lot of different areas, ranging from terrible ghettos to Bel Air. Some areas are flat, some are steep. Korea Town and Beverly Hills has more and larger buildings than most city's downtowns, yet Griffith Park is the second largest park in California. Other areas are residential, others are rather rural. It's a huge mishmash of areas.

With all that said, you are sort of right. Los Angeles is a wide area divided into many smaller sections, each with it's own identity, but I'd hardly call it featureless.

Well LA is a county, as well as a city. Therefore the perceived featurelessness stems from the huge geographic spread. The city of LA does have metropolitan aspects, but this doesn't extend to Santa Monica, Compton, East LA, etc.

I've never lived in LA, but trust me I would be permanently based there if I could. Luckily i get to visit several times a year out of choice.

I have lived in London, and I work there lots also, living about 1 hour outside it on the train.

Both have their pros and their cons. To say however that LA is lacking in urban identity comparing one to the other doesn't, for me, do either justice.

The Spanish inspired architecture of areas like the Hollywood Hills, juxtaposed with the small but very well formed downtown LA area, which both has amazing modern architecture and some amazing vintage art deco buildings like the Oviatt building and it's amazing penthouse mean LA has some fantastic places to see. But yes, if you drive down certain streets you'll come across endless rows of nondescript bungalows on boring looking streets, and vast industrial estates which offer nothing to see at all - connected by a network of freeways (which everyone knows you should just avoid at certain times of the day if at all possible).

Similarly, London, arguably a city many hundreds of years older than LA in the first place - also has some amazing culture and architecture - but wander up to the Wembley area and down some side streets and trust me, it's not exactly a world-class destination! Ever been to Staines?

Both have things to offer. And certain people won't like one over the other. I myself don't particularly like San Francisco, and New York, impressive as it is, is a bit too much like London for my own tastes.

Each to their own. But to say LA is featureless and lacking in urban identity makes me think you need to spend some serious time in that city, get to know the distinct neighbourhoods for a good week at a time, and really enjoy what the Angelinos take for granted.

more like freeways decorated with buildings

A whole lot of factors involving LA's history. The first one is earthquakes. We have a lot of good technology now, that lets us build tall and beautiful structures in earthquake zones, But 100 years ago, that was not the case. Los Angeles sprawled out because it had to, and people built featurelessly because you don't invest so much in something when an earthquake will destroy it at any minute.

The second factor was tuberculosis. In the early 20th century, people moved to LA for the air (no, really.) In very large numbers. And given they were moving to a place where the air would extend their lives and let them live in a more dignified manner, they weren't too picky about esthetics.

A third factor was a very unfortunate thing about American tax policy. Municipalities fund themselves by taxing property value. And that gave people an incentive not to build up too much property value. That got particularly pronounced in the Depressions of 1893 and the Great Depression in the 1930s, when people and businesses would literally shave floors off a building to save on property tax. To this day, American franchise corporations build their stores to be crappy things that fall down as soon as maintenance halts, because building more valuable real estate means paying more in tax.

All these factors converged to make Los Angeles look like that.

Darwinism seems to apply also on the development of urban identity and there wasn't yet enough time/pressures for these urban fabrics to keep up with the 'old world'.

That's why I would never expat outside Europe. It feels like a downgrade.

I've always loved El Segundo for some reason. Most people I tell this to don't understand why but it's just a very charming town to me. Even the old industrial areas west of Sepulveda and north of the refinery have a very cool feel. I love walking around that area and I've noticed over the last 2-3 years that a number of those smaller warehouse/industrial properties are being converted into office space for tech/ad/vfx companies.

The refinery usually offers a tour once a year for the public which is very informative and there is a great park at the top of a small hill off of Imperial Ave that affords what is probably the best view of LAX.

Sadly El Segundo's aerospace industry is slowly but surely shrinking. Plaza El Segundo, where that huge Whole Foods is, used to be a Honeywell fab if memory serves correctly.

Bizarrely, about the nicest commute I ever had was to El Segundo. I lived in Santa Monica by the beach, and worked in El Segundo by the beach (crappy job but that's a different story).

It was a 13 mile cycle down the beach, with the terrible exception of Marina Del Rey, where you had to go inland.

I saw bonfires every Friday after work; an episode of Wilfred being filmed; and once even a pod of Dolphins swimming along and jumping out of the water as I cycled along this unusual formation: https://goo.gl/maps/WXaZm1Kb5Lu (long and narrow with water on either side). I saw numerous beautiful sunsets, drum circles in Venice beach, homeless encampments waking up for the day (I always liked the idea that the homeless at least got to sleep with a ten million dollar view), and the occasional tallbike. Of course, my own recumbent got a fair amount of attention.

This all took about 50-55 minutes. The drive down 405 was 40-50 minutes by comparison.

All the while I inhaled loads of particulates, no doubt, and my rib still hurts from the crack put there by an inattentive driver for the 1 mile stretch between my apartment and the beach. I got screamed at the few times I tried to cycle down Lincoln, and one guy got out of his car and threatened to punch me. I was buzzed too many times to count by gigantic brodozer SUV's and lifted pickups.

Man, I usually say I hate LA but those 8 months of commuting were amazing. I really wish I'd gotten a helmet camera. Paradoxically every commute I've had since has been under 10 minutes and kind of dull. At the risk of being melodramatic I weep to think of the city it could've been.

I live next to a Trader Joe's, target, and Ralph's in Westwood. It is also two short blocks away from where I work. I pay money for that, but damn is it convenient.

I have to remember to drive my car every so often so the battery doesn't drain completely.

Lived in LA for 15 years, Los Feliz area. For most of that time I didn't have a car - I just walked. The weather was always great, Ralphs close enough, Trader Joes, and so on. When they opened the subway, it was almost perfect - would've been better if it actually made it all the way out to the beaches from down-town.

LA truly is a beautiful city if you take the time to check out the non-tourist areas. I'll always remember the delightful, warm purple afternoons in Silverlake and I'll always have a bit of LA with me wherever I go.

Thanks I did not know this song. Was expecting Drinking in LA (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OQsQZvsR_QI)

Information is my vice, I try to obtain it without a price, and without a doubt, the results aren't nice...

shoot, trying to remember lyrics to a great song about "nobody walks in LA" but simply can not find it any which way online! I'm going to have to dust off an old hard drive and transcribe it at 3:23am because now it's driving me crazy, thanks a lot meddle!

Thanks, now I've been chirping like Dale all day much to the irritation of my holiday companions.

That's what I like about LA. Keeps out the superficial people, and draws those who can see past appearances.

As someone who grew up mostly in SF/Oak and now lives in LA, I'm not sure I'd agree. They both have some truly beautiful areas but large parts of SF aren't particularly aesthetically pleasing, at least to me. I grew up mostly in the sunset and I found it fairly drab.

Q: How many Northern Californians does it take to change a lightbulb?

A: Hella!

Q: How many Southern Californians does it take to change a lightbulb?

A: Totally!

Hella Nor Cal or Totally So Cal? The Perceptual Dialectology of California [1]

"This study provides the first detailed account of perceptual dialectology within California (as well as one of the first accounts of perceptual dialectology within any single state). Quantitative analysis of a map-labeling task carried out in Southern California reveals that California's most salient linguistic boundary is between the northern and southern regions of the state. Whereas studies of the perceptual dialectology of the United States as a whole have focused almost exclusively on regional dialect differences, respondents associated particular regions of California less with distinctive dialects than with differences in language (English versus Spanish), slang use, and social groups. The diverse sociolinguistic situation of California is reflected in the emphasis both on highly salient social groups thought to be stereotypical of California by residents and nonresidents alike (e.g., surfers) and on groups that, though prominent in the cultural landscape of the state, remain largely unrecognized by outsiders (e.g., hicks)."

Extra credit question:

Can you locate the isogloss [2] designating the "101" / "The 101" line? [3]

[1] http://stanford.edu/class/linguist159/restricted/readings/Bu...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isogloss

[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V4347ZE0NQM

As a foreigner who's been to both, I'd say LA is a little better. There seems to be less urine in the streets. If you're talking about pure visual aesthetics, I'd also say LA wins, just by a little and primarily because of Santa Monica.

In the grand scheme of things though, I don't think either rank very high, even among American cities. Chicago and New York have far nicer architecture.

Its ugly compared to most places tbh.

More of it was built pre-automobile. There are nice neighborhoods in LA but you'll find the rest looking much like Silicon Valley.

"Yeah, well, you know, that's just, like, your opinion, man."

Please stop moving down here and importing your $3K+ rents, kthx then.