About the density in Los Angeles: New York, it ain't

By Steve Hymon

Aug. 27, 2007 12 AM PT

Times Staff Writer

Every few years, and particularly during building booms, the city of Los Angeles seems to go through a spasm of introspection. The big question: Are we becoming the next -- oy vey! -- New York?

It is, of course, easy to confuse the two cities. They are almost exactly alike, except for their wildly different topography, climate, architecture, history, transportation systems and number of hot dog stands.

That doesn’t stop people from trying to compare them. Take, for example, a recent opinion piece by Joel Kotkin in The Times.

Kotkin, a presidential fellow in urban futures at Chapman University, said that new city ordinances designed to increase density in downtown Los Angeles “are only the latest move toward the Manhattanization of Los Angeles.”

L.A. becoming the new New York is an intriguing notion, as a certain reporter still misses living at 15th Street and 8th Avenue and the nearby (and now closed) Cedar Tavern.

So let’s start with the obvious question:

Is the city of Los Angeles anywhere near as dense as New York City?

No, although L.A. is denser than most large American cities and there are a few places in L.A. that have Big Apple-type densities.

As of 2006, Los Angeles had a population density of 8,208 per square mile. The density for all five boroughs of New York was 27,110 people per square mile and for Manhattan was 70,069 per square mile, according to population estimates and geographical data from the Census Bureau.

To put it another way, Los Angeles’ population of about 4 million (state and federal estimates differ) would need to grow by about 28 million to achieve the same average density across present-day Manhattan.

The problem with those numbers is that they are averages across broad geographical areas. So let’s look at the question from a more intensely local perspective, the tracts that the Census Bureau breaks cities into.

Tracts typically measure well under a square mile each. In 2000 -- granted, these numbers are 7 years old -- there were 866 tracts in Los Angeles. Of those, only 13, mostly downtown or just west of it, had greater densities than the average density of Manhattan.

That said, huge swaths of Los Angeles are far more dense than the city’s overall average.

What about other measures of density, such as tall buildings?

Los Angeles has 139 buildings above 20 stories, according to the Department of Building and Safety. New York City has at least 1,719, according to Emporis, a private firm that gathers information on buildings worldwide.

New York had a big head start in this category because Los Angeles had a 150-foot height limit on buildings until the late 1950s, because of seismic concerns. City Hall, at 28 stories, is taller than that height limit because the City Council suspended it for a day in the 1920s to allow the building permit to be issued. Sneaky!

It also should be said that the number of high-rise buildings in Los Angeles is about to dramatically increase. There are 93 buildings in the planning stage, under construction or recently completed in Los Angeles that will be more than 10 stories, or 100 feet tall, said Andrew Adelman, chief of the Building and Safety Department. By the way, there are 471 buildings in the city 10 stories or more.

The majority are downtown and some of them are huge, including seven that would be higher than 50 stories and one next to Pershing Square that is planned for 76 stories.

If all goes as planned, Koreatown, Century City and Hollywood are all going to see some tall buildings.

Adelman said that construction of such tall buildings in Los Angeles virtually came to a halt between 1991 and 2004, when only three buildings taller than 10 stories were erected in the city. The reasons: the real estate slowdown of the 1990s, the 1992 riots and the 1994 Northridge earthquake, among others, he said.

Adelman reports to Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, who has frequently said he wants to see a more vertical city. Looks like he’s getting his wish, eh?

Any wildly unscientific experiments that show the difference between New York and L.A.?

On Wednesday, a certain reporter tried driving 100 blocks of Figueroa Street from Century Boulevard to 1st Street downtown while also counting the number of pedestrians.

It’s not easy counting and driving, so the results are not exactly accurate. But the guess here is that somewhere between 500 and 1,000 people were actually walking down the street. Not exactly throngs.

And some blocks looked like neutron bomb explosion sites. The buildings remained, but good luck finding the people.

What about traffic?

Anyone who spends a lot of time in City Hall knows that quite often when people talk about density they’re usually talking more about the city being choked with cars than with people.

Robert Bernstein of the Census Bureau cited a pair of charts from the 2000 census. Again, the numbers are old, but there’s no reason to think the trends they reflect have changed much.

In 2000, about 83% of households in Los Angeles had at least one car available to them compared with 44% in New York. Not surprisingly, the second chart showed that about 10% of workers over 16 in L.A. took mass transit to their jobs while 66% drove alone.

In New York, 53% took mass transit and 25% drove alone. Even Bernstein was surprised at the data.

“It’s hard to imagine two cities in the nation any more diametrically opposite,” he said.

To put it simply, when you add people to Los Angeles, you are also likely adding a lot of cars.

If there’s a problem with density in Los Angeles, it’s not that we’re becoming New York. It’s that -- as Kotkin argued -- there hasn’t been a good public debate about density and its effects, the foremost of which is traffic.

The other problem is that the same politicians who are pushing density can’t point to much in the way of results when it comes to building the transit system that would give current and future residents an affordable, convenient and fast alternative to getting around.

This came up in conversation the other day with Kathy Bart- low-Santos, a member of the Westchester-Playa del Rey Neighborhood Council.

She wishes a little bit of New York would rub off on L.A.

“Something has to be done with the infrastructure of L.A. to get cars off the road,” she said. “They have to make it like New York, where it’s not just poor people who take the bus.”

Amen, sister.

On the subject of traffic, what’s it like driving in Pasadena?

Pretty good most of the time, except for the traffic signals.

Can the word that a certain reporter uttered after missing nine of 10 traffic signals on Del Mar Boulevard be printed in this newspaper?

No. Four of those red lights, by the way, came in a four-block stretch. One light would turn green, one block down the light would go red. Reverse synchronization!

Next week: How a raccoon can get a green light in Pasadena.

steve.hymon@latimes.com

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

How does Los Angeles stack up?

While Los Angeles is more densely populated than most large American cities, it still isn’t as dense as some of the other well-known cities below.

Population per square mile*

New York City: 27,110

Manhattan: 70,069

Brooklyn: 35,335

Bronx: 32,416

Queens: 20,414

Staten Island: 8,231