Why Los Angeles Has More Potential Than Any Other American City

Los Angeles is a city with a tremendous amount of potential-with its fantastic weather, considerable population density, and massive wealth, it could, in theory, fundamentally change its urban planning to become a walkable, bike able, transit oriented city, where owning a car is merely an option for its residents. It could become the Amsterdam of America. It could become the greatest city in the world.

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-Thomas Y

[alexwilliamns]

Just want to mention the importance of young people getting involved in municipal politics. Building good cities takes decades. Get involved so you can see your city turn into the place you want to live in.

[edwardduda]

I owned a bike while in LA and it’s a very hostile city towards bikers. You feel like people are genuinely trying to hit you and bike theft is very common. I actually stopped riding my bike because someone totaled it trying to steal it. The city would need to address all these problems in order for people to feel comfortable riding a bike.

[jwt]

You should do this same presentation at a city council meeting.

I’m with you on this one. I’ve been thinking for a while that if cars had never been invented, Southern California could have been one of the best places in the world to live. Look at the historic downtown built in the gilded age. Absolute masterpieces of architecture. In 1950, LA had the best public transit in the world. And then the car came along.

[Hal-uqqv]

I briefly studied urban design and was planning on being a city planner. The city of L.A. actually had that one opportunity going back 100 years ago. The Olmsted Bros, the same ones who created Central Park had plans to do the same in Southern California where there would be a series of mini Central Parks spread from the Long Beach area as far west as Malibu, north to Burbank and as far east as the budget would've allowed.

The second was the buildings itself. Angelinos in the 1920s wanted a city that didn't replicate the "gray jungles" of the east. Which explains why the city is spread out and the first skyscraper didn't exist until the late 1920s. Lloyd Wright, son the the famed architect, Frank Lloyd Wright also designed a downtown for L.A. in the early 1920s that did not look like any of the established skyscrapers we knew at that point in time. It was suppose to be a cohesive unit similar to what you remember from the 1970s movie, Logan's Run where a series of monorail would lead from the outskirts of the valleys into the city that would've looked like a dome where the parking structure and monorail station would be located underneath the entire city. There would be one main street where visitors.could.easily access the different buildings and have its separate operating walkway like.an escalator, except it moves.horizontally.

The rivers. L.A. in the early 1900s suffered from lots of floods. Which was why they cemented the main arteries of their rivers. What they should've done instead was work with the Olmsted idea and create mini lakes to go with the parks. The foot of the river near the mountains should've been a.damn where they could've used for.electricity purposes.and provided for their own fresh water system and have better controlled river flow.

The reason this didn't happen was the 1920s LA Council simply thought it was too radical. Money was not yet an issue and the Great Depression would not happen until the late 1920s. The most controversial reason was the oil issue. Oil tycoons sought to take advantage of the growing auto industry. Freeways/highways did not exist yet until Pres Eisenhower made it law in the 1950s. The oil tycoons alongside Ford Motors saw a booming market where cars and the gas industry would first see its initial national push. And I believe L.A. was ground zero for this. NYC, Chicago and SF were already established with their own subway system and skyscrapers. L.A. didn't have this yet. So instead of utilizing the monorail and mini central parks, it would not surprise anyone if those same oil.tycoons paid off that 1920s LA Council from accepting those alternate and sound proposals mentioned earlier. And so here we are today.

[mklinger]

I agree that LA has potential, but I think you've overblown the perfect weather bit. A lot of "anti bike" people use bad weather as a reason for not having bike infrastructure, but there's little to no correlation between biking and weather. The only thing that determines how many people bike is how much bike infrastructure you have and how well you maintain it.

[salvadorjimenez]

LA is far from flat. Very hilly city, but I understand the idea and agree. The best thing quarantine did was allow the expansion of outdoor seating permits on business. Made street seating abundant and in some neighborhoods, completely shut down streets making things very communal. LA would benefit from it, but it needs to loose about half its car population for those changes to even start

[MaxFung]

i agree with you wholeheartedly, and live in LA, but i think we are the minority in this debate

[BrentDaughertyMe]

I got an ebike 8 months ago and it's changed my relationship with the city. It makes short trips less than 4 miles actually enjoyable instead of worrying about traffic and parking. Unfortunately the bike infrastructure makes some trips overly complicated to try to avoid busy roads, and many intersections need to be bike friendly.

[Kerry.]

I ride the Santa Monica Blvd bike gutter to work in Century City everyday and it's so terrifying with drivers going 55mph and 3 lanes right next to you! Really want the city of LA to step up its cycling game.

[Bartkonig]

Being Dutch and informed about cityplanning. You briefly mentioned that cars and the places people go to should be more connected. I find that quite the understatement. You really have to not only redesign the infrastructure, but moreso the disolution of districts as a whole. In most Dutch cities including Amsterdam and Western Europe. People have mixed communities, residential, business, schools, restaurants, cafe's, shops, public spaces and parks are always close by. That's why there is no need to drive a car everywhere. Ofcourse we use cars here and have suburbs, but not in the extend as in the US. It's so normal here to go to work, go to the supermarket, go to uni/school, go to the gym, meet friends later at night, go on a date or clubbing. All on the bike that same day. Because most of those amenities are within a 5km (3mile) radius. - Though our country is flatter than a pancake which makes biking more suitable to do so and since LA is much larger. The public transport should commute people from cityhub to cityhub, so the overall distance to anywhere usefull would be deminished. I fear that the mindset of the people should also change, if the citizens are not aware of the benefits or the benefits to do so are scarse, it won't change much I'm afraid. The state gouvernment could also play it's part there I think. - Thank you for your insights anyways Thomas. Greets from the other side of the Atlantic😉

[Jorge-lmbg]

As a New Yorker visiting LA, I could see the potential. I’d probably won’t go back for a long time, the heavy dependence on cars and the insane amount of homeless people is a big turn off.

[Mojabi_ghost]

I’ve lived in LA my entire life, and over the past 20 years that I’ve been here the key reasoning you missed in why LA falls short when it comes to public transportation, parks, etc. is the housing crisis. It’s quite sad honestly, because homelessness has always existed in LA especially in the downtown Skid Row area, but has only been growing with the pandemic, the gentrification of LA from social media’s influencers romanticization of the city, and to add to insult to injury we’re entering a recession. The rapid growth of the city, and lack of housing growth has led to the massive displacement of our population where’s where the “Californians are driving up the rents” notion comes from. This homelessness issue has only stunted the growth of LA’s public transit by plaguing our public transportation system with stigmatization of it being unsanitary, unreliable, dangerous, and not worth the effort of investing into. As someone who’s taken public transportation my entire life these stereotypes aren’t completely wrong, but ignoring the issue as a whole definitely doesn’t help:/

[whatwebuilt]

Great video! If you visit LA, try to come during an event called “Ciclavia”, where the city shuts down several roads to cars to allow cycling. It’s wonderful to experience this kind of potential firsthand.

[uniworkhorse]

Really shifting my perspective on LA as a San Franciscan. Whenever I visit it feels like a very hostile place for bikes, and I've never really imagined it to be anything else. Really love how you pointed out the density compared to Amsterdam in some areas. Imagining LA without the constant sound of the highway and cars in the background... Is surprisingly beautiful!

That AI walkable street generator is a really cool project btw thx for sharing!

[WolfSeril]

The most infurating thing about living in LA was that a 10 mile commute could easily take an hour. If everyone switched to bikes you could literally get everywhere twice as fast.

[AwokenEntertainment]

I would love to see Los Angeles develop in the ways you are talking about.. change is needed. We deserve it

[groomboek]

Another Dutch trick: Make it impossible for cars to go through a neighbourhood. Say you want to go by car from the south side to the north side of the neighbourhood. The only way to do this is to go around the neighbourhood, because the direct route is blocked for cars. On bicycle and foot you can take the direct route.

This keeps a lot of car traffic out of the neighbourhood, and makes it more attractive to cycle or walk to your destination.

[edwinrodriguez]

Wow, I can't believe it. A video that's actually highlighting a potentially positive thing about LA instead of tearing it down.

Very nice video! I enjoyed it. Keep up the good work.

[amvin]

as an "urbanist" Angeleno, this is a great video with honestly a pretty good counterpoint to most other urbanist youtubers (who I also still respect) who I think often don't know the city and don't want to bother to get to know or research it to give it a fair critique. LA has just long been the punching bag of the urbanist community, and is often treated as unsalvageable. I am a bit tired of all the hate given that, as you mentioned, LA has arguably been investing more heavily into transit than any other metro area in the nation; often imperfectly, but still, very stark improvements that, once things hit a certain inflection point and they solve the "last mile" issue for many commuters, will I think reap significant benefits.

as of right now, the expansion in rail has been dramatic over the past couple decades, but still incomplete for a large city. It still needs time and further investment for it to become interconnected enough to reap the benefits (with many very good projects under active construction to that end, including the purple line extension, rail connection to the airport, and the regional connector downtown). and I think the city has proved open to constructive criticism: e.g., critiques regarding investment in rail versus the sprawling bus system, which I think the city has heard given their recent push to improve bus headways (again, as you mentioned). they seem to now be considering critiques regarding biking, and hopefully they will improve upon their current plans in the coming years. Look, urban tranist planning never goes 100% smoothly, but I'm very bullish on LA over the next decade.

[TheNJB]

Well La isn’t exactly flat but I agree with you. I would love to see a lot more trains in our city. I’m originally from London and it’s something I wish US cities would take that from other cities.