San Angeles’ Unique Built Environment

The border of Anaheim and Garden Grove. (Photo by Brianne Lucchesi)

Whenever I leave the megacity of San Angeles, or better known as the Greater LA Area, I am struck by how unique it is. The unending expanse of built up city, from Camp Pendleton in the south up to the Angeles National Forest in the north, is unlike any human geography anywhere else in the world.

Taking the train out of Manhattan and up to Buffalo on Monday, I was amazed at how much time we spent rolling through forests and farmland. It took no time at all to get off the island and through Yonkers. From there, the landscape was dotted by towns and small cities, each one separate and distinct. These were not just distinctions based on subtle changes to the public rights of way, but true separation between where one town ends and the next begins. The same has been true in Florida and Oklahoma and Massachusetts and Washington and North Carolina. It’s even true in San Diego and the Bay Area. Southern California is the only place where every city abuts its neighbors without any separation.

So much of the discussion of urban planning, especially transportation planning, feels foreign and no applicable to San Angeles. The simple idea of connecting places with transit and high speed roads, while restricting speeds through places, makes sense in a place like upstate or western New York, but it feels completely nonsensical in Los Angeles. Any given arterial road or intersection in San Angeles is simultaneously a place and not a place. It’s a place to go, and a landscape to drive through.

Planners working in Southern California must translate and adapt the best practices and teachings of urban planning that originate elsewhere to the context of San Angeles. This is not to say that planners can ignore the best practices from elsewhere, but that we must work harder to transform our cities to accommodate planning’s best practices. City builders must focus on building up distinct places that can serve as complete communities, separate from one another, and be connected regionally.

San Angeles’ regional planning authority, SCAG (the Southern California Association of Governments), already identifies regional job centers, many of which are already connected by transit. These areas can be seen as Southern California’s version of the distinct cities and towns found elsewhere. These job centers are the future of San Angeles, and most new development should be focused within their boundaries.

To ensure these areas become the focal points for new development that will transform them into complete communities, local transit service should be provided within each job center, radiating out from the existing regional transit lines provided by Metrolink. Streets and public realm improvements should be made to ensure these areas are walkable and provide transportation options. Building upon these transportation improvements, enough housing should be built to accommodate the job demand in each center, along with all of the necessary neighborhood services like grocery stores and schools.

This would transform San Angeles from being a giant placeless expanse to being a series of distinct places with their own identities and unique personalities. This is not a transformation that can happen overnight, but a half century of consistent progress could lead to a radically transformed Southern California.