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[tags]california, urban planning, paul shigley, downtown[/tags]
Pasadena’s City Hall.
Credit: Lush.i.ous via Flickr (Creative Commons license)
The California Policy & Development Report provides us with two items on Labor Day. The second follows up on editor Paul Shigley’s subjective rankings of the state’s best and worst big-city downtowns. Los Angeles came in fourth, with San Francisco and San Diego tying for first and Long Beach placing third. MetroRiderLA followed up Shigley’s blog with “We’re number four!” and “How we stand in California“.
Now he wants to follow it up with a ranking of the best and worst downtowns of mid-size cities. Shigley recaps the discussion the first ranking generated, but does not mention what is the minimum population for a mid-size city. The population ceiling is 300,000.
The title of the entry mentions Pasadena (2006 population: 144,133) and Santa Barbara (2006 population: 85,681 — lower from 2000 and close to 1990 level). Population data is taken from the U.S. Census Bureau. The California population rankings show 478 geographic areas, with Vernon being the smallest at 91.
If Santa Barbara qualifies, then we could say a floor of 75,000, with Chino Hills being the base. If it’s 50,000, the floor is the North California city of Rocklin. The ceiling is Riverside, with a population of 293,761 — California’s 12th largest city.
The choices this time range from 88 to 152, depending on the floor. There are plenty of cities — and more unique forms — from which to choose, whereas California offered only a dozen big cities.
Shigley returned to the feedback he received for his best/worst California big cities entries. He detected a “Blue Line” rivalry between partisans of both ends of the line. “People in Long Beach loved us, while advocates of the new urban scene in L.A. were not happy,” wrote Shigley. ” ‘How could anyone be so ignorant as to rank downtown Long Beach, which is like a northern extension of suburban Orange County, ahead of the downtown in the country’s second largest city?’ “
Shigley reinforces the punchline value of the Central Valley to coastal urban California. He wrote, “So not everybody thinks downtown Long Beach is a better place than downtown L.A. But at least everybody agrees Fresno has the worst big-city downtown in California. … No one, however, has quibbled with our listing of downtown Fresno as the worst. No one. Poor Fresno.”
MetroRiderLA encourages discussion here, but Shigley invites registered users to comment on his blog to influence the forthcoming entry.
Discussion
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Please keep discussions civil: exercise Troll Controll.
At this point, we are dealing with thinly-sliced baloney. There is scarcely a reason to distinguish between the dozens and dozens of medium-sized cities in southern California, and most of them have no downtown areas to speak of, apart from some area on a fantasy map. How would you, for example, identify downtown Westminster? And what would distinguish it from any part of, say, Buena Park? [Hint: It's the font on the street signs.]
Anyone who thinks downtown Long Beach is an extension of OC has probably been to neither. They must have taken a wrong turn at Lakewood.
A lot of eligible cities might not have downtowns, but you’re too dismissive by saying these cities are thinly sliced baloney.
Santa Monica? Pasadena? Whittier?
Sure you don’t want to reconsider?
True, some of these cities are genuine cities with real downtowns. I just think there will be a lot of non-towns included. Will comparing Santa Monica to Westminster really provide much insight? And how would you distinguish all those inland empire/oc cities from each other?
I just don’t want to see a whole lot of crap tied out at the bottom.