Everyone knows that Los Angeles is a city with no center, a sprawling, car-centric expanse where pedestrians are rare and public transportation is virtually non-existent. A lost cause for urbanism. Right?
Sure, people have pointed out for years that the greater Los Angeles region is actually the densest in the country, even more than greater New York. But astute researchers have also pointed out that “dense sprawl” is not the same as having a concentrated core — think Manhattan or Chicago — that draws transit riders from its far-flung suburbs. LA’s “dysfunctional density” is incapable of getting people out of their cars.
But LA defenders insist there are dense neighborhoods west of downtown that could rival those in the big cities of the East Coast, or San Francisco. For a visitor to LA, that’s pretty hard to believe. Lengthy, heated arguments ensue every time a former San Franciscan moves to LA and touts the merits of his or her new home — not only are people are less snobbish (undoubtedly true), but also that people really walk, bike, and take transit many places in central LA. But there couldn’t really be anywhere in LA as dense as San Francisco, at least not on the same scale. Could there?
I certainly wouldn’t have thought so, but when I invited data to this opinion party, it made a persuasive argument that has opened my eyes to the intriguing hidden city of Central LA (a fictitious city whose boundaries are of my own invention). Using US Census data, I decided to essentially draw a city the size of San Francisco around the densest portions of central LA, encompassing downtown and neighborhoods to its west (47 square miles in total, just like SF).
The surprising result? San Francisco and the “city” of central LA (a subset of the larger municipality) are equal in population density over those 47 square miles, with about 837,000 people in both cities (all of SF and the core of LA). Not only that, but the LA core has about 85% as many jobs as San Francisco does, making it a substantial center of employment (though a smaller share of the whole region than SF is, since the Bay Area is much smaller than the greater LA region). That’s a stunning finding for any follower of urban planning, since San Francisco is widely known as one of the densest places in the United States, and the second densest city in the country (after New York).
Here’s the map. Note that Koreatown and Westlake/MacArthur Park are as dense as almost anywhere in SF, and in general, the cities look a lot alike in their overall density profile.
If Los Angeles happened to have much narrower boundaries, it could be tied for second densest city in the country as well. So do people actually walk and ride public transportation in this dense, San Francisco-sized core area of LA? They do. About 56% of people drive alone to work in the Central LA area shown in the map, far lower than the national average (though still much higher than San Francisco, where 37% of people drive alone to work).
And there are more than two-thirds as many boardings of public transportation in Central LA as there are in SF, suggesting many people are using transit for non-work trips as well (in LA, this includes LA Metro, Metrolink, and other smaller operators; in SF it includes Muni, BART, Caltrain and other smaller operators as well).
LA may not have SF’s transit ridership yet, but with a little nourishment from elected officials, planners, and engaged citizens, it could get there in time. Just for fun, here’s the spread of each Central LA neighborhood’s drive-alone-to-work ratio. (If you’re into walking and taking transit, stick near the top of the list when looking for a neighborhood to live in.)
If it’s so dense, why aren’t people already riding transit as much in Central LA as they are in San Francisco? In part, that’s because many people work outside the Central LA area, or they have free parking at the end of their trip to work, or they don’t feel their transit options are good enough. Another important reason is that LA doesn’t treat Central LA as the true city it really is, where urban densities undoubtedly warrant putting pedestrians above space-hogging private automobiles.
If there’s one takeaway from this data, it’s that LA has no reason not to go all-in in investing in its core, making it a more urban place, and seeing San Francisco not as an anomaly, but as a peer. As for us San Franciscans, maybe we can finally get over our fear of greater density. After all, do we want to be known as only as dense as LA? A little healthy competition is, after all, a lot better than disdain.
Note: This story was originally published in 2015.
