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Whenever I ask locals about Downtown LA,
I usually get responses like, some parts are okay,
or, it's getting better, or, I never go there,
and there's some data to back up those opinions.
The "LA Times" defines Downtown LA
as 5.8 miles located right here
in the little nest of freeways.
It's home to about 35,000 people
with a population density of 4,800 people per square mile.
The next largest city in the US is Chicago.
Its central business district
is also about 5.8 square miles,
but it's home to 161,000 people
for a population density of 27,000 people per square mile.
Philadelphia, the center of the seventh largest
metropolitan area in the US,
is also about 5.8 square miles.
It's home to 145,000 people
for a population density of 24,600 people per square mile.
Downtown LA's population density
is closer to central Syracuse, New York.
So you might be thinking, it's a central business district,
who cares if people live somewhere else?
But there's a lot of evidence to show
that there's not a whole lot
of office buildings here either.
Let's use the number of skyscrapers
as a proxy for office density.
New York City has 300, Chicago has 133, and LA has 27.
Miami and Houston have more tall buildings.
I could go on and on, but I think you get the point.
LA has a smaller downtown than you'd expect
for a region this size.
It's like a big city just sort of melted.
The question this video tries to answer is why,
so let's answer it after the bike bell.
(bike bell ringing)
I know that a lot of you watching this
think you know the answer.
Cars and sprawl.
Los Angeles didn't grow up because it grew out,
but Los Angeles existed before the car
and its downtown was smaller
than you would expect back then too,
so cars aren't the only answer.
In 1930, construction began
on the Empire State Building in New York,
which was the tallest building in the world until 1972
when it was overtaken by the World Trade Center Towers,
again in New York.
Why couldn't Los Angeles have built
a tower to rival the Empire State Building in 1930?
In 1930, Los Angeles had
1.3 million people in the city limits
and 2.2 million in LA County.
It wasn't a small city.
And 1930 was right in the transition
from streetcars to automobiles for both cities.
Los Angeles had the largest streetcar network
in the world in the 1920s,
and many of the lines converged in Downtown.
A large building in a central location
wouldn't have been a crazy idea.
The most straightforward answer was height limits.
It would've been against LA code
to build an Empire State competitor.
In 1904, the city imposed a 150-foot limit on new buildings,
with the only exception being City Hall.
That building, constructed in 1928, is 454 feet tall.
You can see how small Downtown LA looks
in this picture from that period.
For comparison, this is New York at that same time.
In 1956, voters approved lifting the height limit
by a three to one margin.
This set off a Downtown building boom.
By 1968, City Hall was no longer
the tallest building in town,
dwarfed by the 40-story Union Bank Building.
Today, the Wilshire Grand Center, built in 2017,
and the iconic US Bank Tower, built in 1989,
dominate the skyline.
Both are over 1,000 feet tall.
Like I said, the height limit went into effect in 1904
and two years later, San Francisco was leveled
by a major earthquake and subsequent fires.
You can imagine that the disaster
only reaffirmed the need for a height limit,
especially when the San Andreas Fault,
the same fault that destroyed San Francisco,
was discovered to continue to Southern California.
It's only 30 miles from Downtown LA.
The US Bank Building is designed to withstand
an earthquake of 8.3 on the Richter scale
and can sway with the gusty Santa Ana winds,
but they didn't know how to do that back then.
Why did Los Angeles even pass a high limit anyway?
What's wrong with tall buildings?
Well, a couple of things if you're a civic leader
in turn of the last century Southern California.
Los Angeles was not founded and settled
because they wanted it to be another Manhattan.
This isn't the story of Chicago,
an industrial colossus that had ambitions
to be the largest city in the world.
Los Angeles was a farming community.
Settlers were amazed by the variety of produce
that could be grown in LA County.
You had oranges, grapes, alfalfa, nectarines, and on and on.
The climate was perfect
for just about any crop you'd wanna grow,
provided you had water.
The climate was also perfect for sanitariums and hospitals,
at least according to Los Angeles promoters.
The California Pavilion at the Chicago World's Fair
claimed LA had a climate like Italy,
and it would be perfect for curing ailments.
That message resonated
with Industrial Revolution era urban dwellers.
Cities back then were dirty, gray, and teeming with illness.
They were often overcrowded,
as this was the era before cars and reliable mass transit.
People had to walk to the factory
from their overcrowded tenement buildings.
The dream of life in Los Angeles
was not available to everyone though.
Initially, only the wealthy could afford to move west
and recuperate in the Southern California sunshine.
They built large homes in the countryside
with ample fresh air.
This was the beginning
of a decentralized power structure in the area.
In most cities, the elite were
downtown real estate interests and industry leaders.
Los Angeles didn't have that same focus,
and it started way back in the 1800s.
Los Angeles did grow
in the first decades of the 20th century,
and not just with the sickly rich.
This is when Los Angeles' largest,
most important industry really got rolling,
and I'm not talking about Hollywood
and I'm not talking about oil.
I'm talking about real estate speculation.
Making money as a city grows is not a new thing.
The New York Commissioners' Plan of 1811
was designed to commodify Manhattan
and promote the orderly sale of land,
but Los Angeles perfected it
and took it to new heights, or sprawl.
Huge tracks of orchards and pastures
were open to home development,
and it seemed that everyone in the city
was either a builder or a realtor.
As I mentioned,
Los Angeles had the largest streetcar network
in the world during this era,
and that's because real estate developers installed them
so buyers could access their neighborhoods.
What does all this have to do with the size of Downtown LA?
Well, in this early era of streetcar suburb expansion,
Downtown LA was still the absolute center of the metro area.
In 1920, 90% of retail trade occurred in the city center,
but by 1950, that number was only 17%.
This is one of the reasons
that the height limit was rescinded.
Downtown was clearly not doing well
and Downtown real estate interests
thought that shiny skyscrapers would help
bolster the area's image
and encourage people to return downtown.
But by this point, many of the wealthiest residents
had a stake in continuing the development
of suburban neighborhoods.
This is where the real power and money were.
And Downtown had competition,
as skyscrapers were going up along Wilshire Boulevard
and Century City on the city's west side.
Los Angeles has also begun to bump up
against all the other communities in Southern California,
forming a vast sea of suburbia
connected by an increasingly large freeway network,
and pockmarked with areas of commercial development
that further de-emphasized Downtown LA.
Long Beach, Anaheim, Riverside, and others
became cities in their own right.
They were still overshadowed by Los Angeles,
but are cities with so many people
that they could be the center of their own urban areas
if they were anywhere else.
Los Angeles became the largest node
in a polycentric metropolis,
instead of the dominant city
surrounded by a sea of lesser suburbs.
Today, there are efforts to increase the number
of people living in Downtown LA and densify that area,
but I think it's safe to say
that Downtown LA will never achieve
the heights of Chicago or Manhattan.
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