100 L.A.s didn't bloom in Europe. The car is similar to other fads, it's excitin...

anamax · on March 28, 2009

> What's unique about the US west coast is that the cities there were not much older then the automobile

San Jose, LA, and San Francisco are all 100 years older than the automobile. Seattle, Sacramento, and Oakland are 50 years older. (Wikipedia says that the Seattle area has been inhabitied for 4000 years.) I didn't check any other West Coast cities.

biohacker42 · on March 30, 2009

I don't doubt that Seattle has been inhabited for 4000+ years, but I don't think the bulk of was built quite that long ago.

chiffonade · on March 27, 2009

> but later people start to get tired of it.

I assure you this is not the case in Los Angeles, Tokyo, Berlin, anywhere that car culture is the culture.

Once a place grows up with car culture, it very rarely loses it. That's the point of the article.

biohacker42 · on March 27, 2009

Both Tokyo and Berlin suffered major destruction and were rebuilt after the invention of the car.

I was thinking more along the lines of European towns like Zurich.

chiffonade · on March 28, 2009

> suffered major destruction and were rebuilt after the invention of the car.

Really? Pretty much every single major city with 10M or more inhabitants in China (of which there are dozens, if not hundreds) was destroyed in WW2 and rebuilt after. There was no Marshall plan for this, which is why you probably had no idea. The US was not interested in helping communists in China or the USSR rebuild after WW2.

And even if a city wasn't destroyed, it was rebuilt just for the sheer hell of it 2 or 3 times in a row during the post-war period. Chinese cities have pretty much been being rebuilt continuously since 1950. Anyone who's ever gone would know this, which you obviously haven't.

So what exactly is your point, other than you didn't learn anything about China during your US or European history classes in high school?

biohacker42 · on March 30, 2009

Mmmm.. 'k.

Having been born behind the iron curtain I do know there was no Marshall plan outside of Western Europe. But I did not know that cities in China were rebuilt 2 or 3 times for the sheer hell of it during the post-war period.

My point is that I agree with you, L.A. (like most American cities) is a city build around cars. I'm no sure about Berlin and Tokyo, but I am quite sure about the plethora of other west and east European cities I've enjoyed living in. Those cities, much like NY, are great to live in even if you don't own a car.