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Comment by ericzawo | Hacker News Reader

Having moved to LA this february, the sprawl is really something I had no true appreciation for until I moved here for real, and tried to run errands across town. It's a gigantic, beautiful, complicated place.

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One the experiences for me that never gets old is coming in to LAX (flight path East to West) and the sprawl just goes on forever. The other crazy thing that 60% of the population speak a language other than English at home. So I think it has one of the best options for cuisine in the world, because it's all there (somewhere!)

A family member lives near Pasadena. We asked if they wanted to go to a restaurant near Santa Monica. They sort of scoffed at the idea of going over to the west side unless it was really important.

To be fair, that is an hour-long trip in the best case scenario

I love how Google Maps directions for a trip like that (in the future) always estimate like 1h to 3h.

I think a not insignificant amount of it is literally just pavement too. Absurdly wide roads and parking lots everywhere. It’s a bit of a hellscape really.

All the way to almost San Diego, which is insane

The density at least means you don't have to really run across town for much and can stay within a certain radius for most all your needs and wants. I mean look at the density of costcos alone. Many other metros might have 1 or 2 for the entire area. Then again a lot of other metros you basically can drive end to end in 25 miles.

I'm confused. LA doesn't strike me as dense. How dense can you get with huge areas of single family homes?

LA is the densest major urban area in the country. The MSA isn't dense cause it includes all of Los Angeles County which is half desert and mountains. But the built up area beats Chicago and New York cause it has consistent, medium suburban density, 7400 people per sq mi. The others have dense city, New York City is 29,000 people per sq mi, but the far suburbs drop off.

8200/sqmi on average. Even the single family home areas punch above their weight compared to the rest of the country because lots are mostly only 50ft wide and most all build-able land is put to some sort of use already.

It's a bunch of cats (mid-sized, and generally mid all-around, cities) fighting under a blanket. The history of the place is a reaction against New York, where the city is dense and had a bunch of super tall buildings. LA, as a region, said "well we don't want that and enacted a bunch of building codes to hamstring any single city in the region from potentially being a successful, mature urban center.

Pretty infuriating to visit Barcelona recently and see that there was a perfect example of good urban planning sitting right there for decades that LA could've simply copied. In the long run this region is simply incapable of maintaining its infrastructure with its tax base, even today you can see it starting to collapse.

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