How big is a town? How small are cities?

[warpus]

I don't get how people are actively pursuing a dream of living in LA and commuting 2 hours to work every day

I think I would go insane

 

[Timsup2nothin]

Funniest line from the article, summarizing their findings in Massachusetts:

These nine communities were all geographically contiguous, and, moreover, matched closely with both lay interpretations and existing administrative divisions of that state’s regions.

In short, after much scienceing we figured out what everyone there already knew.

The interesting question about their analysis is, why fifty? They set up their algorithm to identify fifty regions and got interesting results, but...

The high modularity score of Combo’s output shows that the algorithm has produced a partitioning scheme in which the vast majority of commutes are contained within a single community. However, this still leaves thousands of commutes which cross communities.

That will be the case no matter how many regions they set out to find. At fifty San Diego is not a node in polycentric Los Angeles, but at thirty it probably would be. At a hundred, or maybe two hundred, Palmdale might be its own center instead of such a node. No matter what number you specify there will always be cross border commutes. What constitutes a "significant border" as opposed to an "internodal region between two nodes in a polycentric region" would seem to be determined by the somewhat arbitrary input for "number of regions expected."

 

[Timsup2nothin]

I don't get how people are actively pursuing a dream of living in LA and commuting 2 hours to work every day

I think I would go insane

Most people living in LA are pursuing a dream of NOT commuting two hours to work every day.

 

[warpus]

People continue to move to LA even though they know they will have to commute 2 hours to work. And be stuck in traffic and shave years off their life due to the stress. And yet they still move there

 

[Timsup2nothin]

Not everyone in LA commutes two hours. If you get an "off hour job" it cuts way down. And a whole lot of people actually live reasonably close to where they work, even though a whole lot of people don't. So like I say, it's everybody's dream. Make the big score and move closer to work. Find a job close to home. Whatever. Plus, LA is probably going to be the cutting edge center for "work from home" and telecommuting because it is highly incentivized here.

 

[warpus]

I know that not everyone commutes 2 hours every day, but a lot of people do, and a lot of people spend even longer than that. It's a norm in the city, if you move there for work you can expect to have a crazy commute in store for you every day. I get that there's exceptions.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

I know that not everyone commutes 2 hours every day, but a lot of people do, and a lot of people spend even longer than that. It's a norm in the city, if you move there for work you can expect to have a crazy commute in store for you every day. I get that there's exceptions.

It really isn't a "norm" though. No doubt there are a lot of people who do, and that's a lot more than there are anywhere else. But the mad commuter* is still more of an exception than a rule. Even in a commuter heavy center like Palmdale the majority of people don't have a two hour daily commute. The majority of people who live here actually work here. The majority of people who commute from here don't go any further than Santa Clarita or San Fernando, tops. But the commute that you hear about is the two hour commute, or worse.

As in, I did a six month gig for an electronics company in Sun Valley back in the nineties. That was the worst commuting job I ever had. I found a dozen ways to get there, all of which ran out around 50-60 minutes. But the only thing anyone ever hears about is the day the tomato truck flipped over in the Newhall Pass at five thirty in the morning and took out a couple dozen cars. (Five-thirty was the leading edge of the rush so the road was wide open...six lanes of close packed cars going seventy to eighty MPH, add an instant slick of tomato paste as 40,000 pounds of tomatoes rolls onto the pavement...I'm sure you get the picture) It took me three and a half hours to get to work, and some part of that was actually spent walking around on the freeway chatting with other drivers.

I've had a lot of commuting jobs over the years, but that's really the only commuting story I ever tell. So the perception of this commuting business can become a bit bloated.

I think another thing that tends to skew the perception is the efficiency of the LA freeway system. When I lived in Hawaii I had to get to Pearl Harbor every morning, which was about eight miles away...a forty-five minute commute at that time of day no matter how I went at it. In LA if you have a forty-five minute commute you are probably talking about thirty miles, minimum. My fifty-sixty minute normal commute to Sun Valley was close to fifty miles. There are always stretches that bog down, but for the most part if you are on an LA freeway you are going sixty MPH or better. So when people in LA say "yeah, I drive about twenty miles each way to work" people who live somewhere else, like Honolulu for example, might get the wrong idea. If I had lived twenty miles from Pearl Harbor I'd have had to just come home on the weekends.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

This is an image that I think demonstrates how you would do that. This article does it by looking at the statistical significance of certain point to point commuter flows compared to others:

View attachment 462489

And zoomed out a bit. The colours each represent urban regions identified naively as interconnected (ie by algorithm rather than by human knowledge of political geography.

I have gotten more and more fascinated by this image as the day has progressed. The web of commutes connecting Avalon, on Santa Catalina Island, makes sense. I actually know a guy who commutes on the Avalon Ferry. But that origin point out beyond Catalina...that's in the middle of the ocean. And that really heavy source that looks to be out in the ocean south of Santa Barbara...that's about the right place for East Anacapa...but the official census population of East Anacapa Island is three. And they all work there at the lighthouse.

 

[warpus]

It really isn't a "norm" though. No doubt there are a lot of people who do, and that's a lot more than there are anywhere else. But the mad commuter* is still more of an exception than a rule.

Fair enough, I looked up some stats for LA and the average (driving) commute (one way) is about 30 minutes. That's not so bad. My initial comment was based on stats I seem to remember that were pointing to much longer commute times.. something with the conclusion of "It's not unusual to spend 2-3 hours a day in traffic". I have no idea what the context of that was, but yeah, I've checked and you are right, that seems to be the exception rather than the rule.

I will just never forget the crazy traffic I saw there during rush hour. Everyone sitting in their cars, super annoyed, honking at everything that moves.. err wait no, no cars were moving, everyone was just stuck. Sitting there, honking.. People driving out into the middle of intersections as the right is turning red like idiots, blocking everybody else. Nobody seemed to give a crap. Yeah I bet those people got home with a smile on their face!

I would never want to live there myself, the city is so badly designed around the car that it seems like you have to put up with it no matter what, even if your job is close you will need a car to get around anyway. Most of the city seems like garbage anyway, at least from what I saw. There's parts of the city where rich people live and shop and bathe, and those seem nice, but it's like islands of luxury in a sea of garbage. There's nothing to do downtown and all the restaurants are Mexican. Not that I have anything against Mexican restaurants, but you need some variety

I didn't like Los Angeles much at all! San Francisco was a much better city overall.. from the point of view of an international traveller anyway. LA would be at the bottom of my list of places I'd want to live, even if I had millions to my name. I guess it would probably beat out Detroit, but that isn't saying much

 

[Timsup2nothin]

Maybe. I've never been much for traveling. At an early age I came to believe that if you don't get to know a place there's not much point in going there, and to know a place you have to live there for a while. I've lived a fair number of places, but visited very few beyond them. As a place to live LA is surprisingly good. Though perhaps its best quality is anonymity, which may not appeal to a lot of people.

 

[stfoskey12]

Trying to get a sense of people's mental urban geographies.

From my point of view (and this is talking about urban or metropolitan areas not administrative boundaries because local government boundaries are often very stupid) I think the transition from town to city is somewhere around the 50k to 100k mark. Any independent urban/metro area below 50k isn't a city, anything above 100k isn't a town.

I'd say it's somewhere in the 75k to 150k range. It also depends on if it is a suburb or the largest population center in an area. For example, in North Carolina, Wilmington is more of a city than Cary, IMO, even tho Cary has more people.

 

[warpus]

Maybe. I've never been much for traveling. At an early age I came to believe that if you don't get to know a place there's not much point in going there, and to know a place you have to live there for a while.

My philosophy differs wildly, in that I believe that a place you have never visited is worth visiting and exploring, whether it's for 2 days or 2 years. Better get a glimpse of another way of living and doing things than not being exposed to it at all. You are right that you never really get to know a place unless you stay there for a while, but there is a lot you can learn about a place in a week or two.

 

[Smellincoffee]

I think it depends more on the feel of a place than the population. 50k densely centered in a downtown is going to feel more cityish than 100k all spread out.

Definitely, plus -- an abstract circle drawn around an area that includes subdivisions, commercial pods, and a big industrial park isn't really a town. A city or a town has to have discernible borders, and at least a common conception of itself as A Place.