And it’s true that Los Angeles doesn’t have much of a center it is one of the most decentralized urban areas on earth. Many people, when they think about urban density, understandably picture Manhattan or Hong Kong, not LA. Some of this surprise probably stems from a tendency to associate urban density with busy downtown centers. People are often surprised to learn that Los Angeles is dense. Density Without Downtown, Sprawl Without Suburbia Finally, I examine three alternative ways to measure density that may be more useful. In the remainder of this article I will examine LA’s population distribution in more detail and then discuss how traditional measures of density can mislead planners and transportation policymakers.
Planners are often quick to recommend increased density to combat congestion and make cities more livable, but LA shows us that simply chasing density, without thought as to where that density is, will not do much to help and might actually make things worse. Rather Los Angeles highlights a weakness in the way we traditionally think about density and sprawl. Why does this matter? The point is not to pick on Los Angeles, which has many wonderful attributes to go along with its problems. Los Angeles has “dense sprawl.” Or, to be less charitable, it has “dysfunctional density.” Los Angeles has, to borrow a term coined by urbanist William Fulton, “dense sprawl.” (Or, to be less charitable, it has “dysfunctional density.”) It is too dense to function like classic suburbia, but also has few areas dense enough to be a “city” in the manner of central city New York or San Francisco. The LA region’s combination of high, evenly distributed density puts it in an unfortunate position: it suffers from many of the problems that accompany high population density, including extreme traffic congestion and poor air quality but lacks many of the benefits that typically accompany more traditional versions of dense urban areas, including fast and effective public transit and a core with vibrant street life. In other words, Los Angeles has both a relatively high density and a relatively even distribution of density throughout its urbanized area. These high-density suburbs compensate for the comparatively low density of LA’s urban core, and, in so doing, increase the average density of the area as a whole. cities, such as New York, San Francisco or Chicago. If we look at the density distribution in Los Angeles, we notice that its suburbs are much denser than those of other large U.S. What matters is the distribution of density, or how evenly or unevenly an area’s population is spread out across its geographic area. The other part of the answer is that density by itself-the simple ratio of population to square mile-is not a very useful way to measure sprawl. Rather they are talking about the urbanized area, which is essentially the combined area of the cities and their suburbs. Sprawl is a regional attribute, so when observers point out that LA is denser than New York, they are not talking about the cities of Los Angeles and New York. Part of the answer lies in the vagaries of Census geography. How can Los Angeles be so dense and yet also exhibit so many characteristics associated with sprawl, including high levels of car travel (both in per capita and absolute terms) and low rates of walking, bicycling and transit ridership? In fact, it would be the least sprawling urbanized area in the country.
But if we measure sprawl by population density, LA would not sprawl at all. If one were to measure sprawl by measuring a region’s average level of Vehicle Miles Traveled (VMT), Los Angeles would certainly qualify as sprawling. In fact, Los Angeles has been the densest urbanized area in the United States since the 1980s, denser even than New York and San Francisco. But as it turns out, the Los Angeles urbanized area-which in both myth and fact is very car-oriented-is also very dense. We also know (or think we know) that places where people frequently walk, cycle, or take transit tend to have high population densities, and for this reason we tend to view low density as a proxy for sprawl. This is why Los Angeles, which has more vehicles per square mile than any other urbanized area, and where transit accounts for only two percent of the region’s overall trips, is considered sprawling, while the New York urbanized area is not.
Many people, however, tend to think of “sprawling” cities as places where people make most of their trips by car, and non-sprawling cities as places where people are more likely to walk, cycle, or take transit. Density measured in different ways tells divergent tales about urban form.
0 kommentar(er)
