Why Is Downtown Los Angeles So Small?

I’m in Fremont CA and the housing market here over the last 7-8 years is unlike anything I’ve ever seen. Homes that were bought for $130K in 2015 are now being sold for $590k. I’m talking about tiny, disgusting, poorly built 950 square foot shit boxes in quiet mediocre neighbourhoods. Then you’ve got Better, average sized homes in nicer neighbourhoods that were $300K+ 10 years ago selling for $750k+ now. Wild times.

my grandma grew up in LA in the 20s and 30s. She always talked about having a farm and horses, and I never understood why she described LA as sounding so rural. Apparently back then it was!

If LA had a Chicago-like skyline against the San Gabriel mountains, Pacific ocean, and LA basin, it would look truly spectacular.

Even though transit in LA is considered to be terrible, about 50% of workers get to downtown LA by transit. With new transit lines getting built there (such as the purple line subway and the regional connector), it should allow the downtown to grow and become a more important hub for the region, rather than just one node among others

For a weird case study, look at Vancouver's metro area. It also had a history like LA, where many surrounding suburbs started as major hubs in their own right back in the day (including the former capital city of New Westminster) before "growing into" each other. The difference between Vancouver and LA is the downtown. Vancouver's is highly densified and has a large residential population. And a lot of that can be attributed to the lack of freeways within city limits and focus on public transit. The suburbs, meanwhile, continue to boast their own downtowns, which connect to downtown Vancouver via transit in a hub-and-spoke format. And each suburb is an independent city, with its own mayor and council, just like the LA area. It kinda makes you wonder what LA could've been like, had a few things turned out differently.

I always wondered why LA didn't have many skyscrapers and why real estate was so expensive, this was a MAJOR piece of information that LITERALLY no one talks about.

One thing you don’t mention is that two of LA’s signature industries—aerospace and Hollywood—were not ones that were given to being headquartered in a downtown. In these industries, corporate management tends to get located close to where the work is being performed. In the the case of aerospace, that was near the factories in Long Beach, the South Bay or the Valley. For the movie studios, management stayed in Hollywood or the Westside. The other signature industry, oil, did have headquarters in Downtown LA high rises (UNOCAL, ARCO), though I’m not sure that those headquarters are still there.

Despite LA have a very infinitesimal skyline, I still love it by how interesting it looks. On March 25th, 2022, I went in the downtown area and went up in the Wilshire Grand Center, and I was absolutely flabbergasted of how beautiful the view was.

Los Angeles also has minimum parking requirements which limits the height of the buildings based on the amount of parking they could provide. The damage by parking requirements is more severe when the space is more valuable as that means the opportunity costs were higher.

I remember in the 1980's and early 1990's when downtown Los Angeles was incredibly unimpressive for a city of its size. This was back when the downtown only had about 4 prominent skyscrapers. This was before the US Bank Tower or the Staples Center was built.

It’s always crazy to me how so many of the most population-dense neighborhoods in California are in and around Los Angeles. It’s a weird mix of parking lots and freeways but also lots of two and three story apartments

I grew up east of LA, and even as recently as the 70s there was tons of orchards, vineyards, and strawberry fields out there. It was intermingled within the cities. You might have a lemon orchard wedged in between a McDonalds and a bank. By the 90s it was almost all gone, but LA metro area was still pretty agrarian within living memory.

There was also a big push towards preserving historic buildings in downtown LA starting somewhere around the 1980's. Without that, some of the more charming buildings in desirable areas like the downtown library, the Bradbury Building, etc. would have been demolished. That part's fine with me. IMO the largest problem in downtown LA is there's more space for cars than people.

Just wanted to correct one your stats. Downtown LA was estimated in 2019 to actually have 85,000 residents, which gives it a population density around 14.5 thousand people per square mile, which, while still pretty paltry, is more in line with the rest of Central LA. In addition, in 2000 only 28,000 people lived in downtown, which just shows the tremendous growth that’s been occurring recently. That being said there is still a lot that needs to be done to encourage more density and walkability in the neighborhood and the city as a whole

I am from Michigan and Missouri and from my childhood to now have always had a love and fascination with skylines. To this day, I think that Chicago has the nicest skyline of any city in America.

LA sounds like a huge town more than a huge city

As a former resident of downtown LA and someone who works in this field, I think there are a couple missed points that should have been made. First, I think you missed one of the most significant reasons as to why LA grew out and not up, which is geography. Downtown LA is not bound by geography like nearly every other major American city. Manhattan is an island, downtown Chicago has the lake and the rivers on either side, San Francisco is on a peninsula. Los Angeles had no such restraints, which made development out rather than up much more economical. It's only now, that the metropolitan area has reached its practical limits in terms of sprawl, that the city has begun to increase density around downtown. Second, DTLA is in the midst of a massive housing boom, with multiple skyscrapers going up at any given time. Almost all of those new towers are housing. Entire new neighborhoods have gone up over the last 10-15 years, notably the high-end South Park area near the Staples Center and the Arts District. Also, I'm not sure where you got your statistic that DTLA is home to 35,000 people. The current estimate is that it is home to approximately 83,000 people, more than double your number. That number has significantly increased over the last few years and continues to do so. In fact, DTLA is the single fastest-growing community in the entirely of Los Angeles, with a population expected to more than double in the next few years. The DTLA 2040 community plan estimates added capacity for another 175,000 new residents by 2040. Try to find anywhere in the US planning for that much additional housing in such a small area over the next 18 years. Sources https://downtownla.com/business/dtla-by-the-numbers/residential-growth https://la.urbanize.city/post/la-city-planning-commission-signs-dtla-2040

4:27 didn't expect to see old footage of my home city Cork, Ireland here!

LA’s downtown is quite large. You touch on it at the very end — Wilshire Blvd. Reyner Banham, in LOS ANGELES: THE ARCHITECTURE OF FOUR ECOLOGIES (1971) describes it as as “linear downtown,” and as a resident of LA for 30 years, that makes sense. The 20+ miles of Wilshire, with scattered 30 story buildings on each side, march to the ocean. (LA is not quite alone in this: Venice’s Grand Canal forms a similar linear structure.)

I'm surprised that many haven't pointed this out, but the real business district in early Los Angeles was along Wilshire Boulevard. It's still one of the most dense parts of Los Angeles, especially the Korea town and Westlake sections