A City Without Sidewalks? Welcome to LA

Imagine this: It's Friday afternoon, and your best friend just texted you. "Hey, movie night at my place tonight? Starts at 7!" You check the time—it's 4:30. That should be plenty of time, right? You've got three hours before the movie starts, and your friend's house is only... um, actually, you have no idea how far it is. You just know it takes twenty minutes in the car. Maybe thirty if there's traffic.

Now here's the problem: you don't have a car. Your parents are at work and won't be home until 6. You could ask your neighbor, but she already drove your younger brother to soccer practice. You could take the bus, but... do buses even go there? And even if they do, how long would it take? An hour? Two hours? You briefly consider walking, but then you remember that your friend's neighborhood is technically eight miles away. That's eight miles of highways, strip malls, and streets with no sidewalks.

So what do you do?

If you live in most American cities—New York, Chicago, Boston, San Francisco—you'd probably hop on a bus or subway, maybe walk a few blocks, and arrive at your friend's place with time to spare. But if you live in Los Angeles? You might have to text back: "Can't make it, no ride." Or you might just... not see your friend that night. Not because you don't want to, but because getting there without a car feels nearly impossible.

This, my friend, is the reality of life in Los Angeles. And it's exactly what we're going to explore in this book.

Welcome to the City of Angels (and Freeways)

Los Angeles is one of the most famous cities in the world. Movies, music, television—they all revolve around this sprawling metropolis in Southern California. When people think of LA, they picture sunshine, Hollywood, beaches, celebrities, and yes, lots and lots of cars. But here's something that might surprise you: the car didn't just happen to end up in LA. The car *created* LA. The city wasn't always this way, and it's definitely not the only way cities can be built. Understanding how and why LA became what it is today tells us a lot about cities, transportation, and the choices we make about where we live.

Before we dive in, let's talk about what makes LA so unique. Most cities around the world—and most cities throughout history—were built around people walking. Think about ancient Rome, medieval European towns, or even older American cities like Boston and Philadelphia. These places were designed so that most of what you needed was within walking distance: your home, your work, your church, the market, your friend's house. Even after the invention of trains and streetcars, these cities kept their "walkable" bones. The trains and trams were added on top of an existing city designed for humans on foot.

Los Angeles did something different. Instead of building a city first and then adding cars, LA decided to build a city *for* cars. And that decision shaped everything—the streets, the buildings, how far apart everything is, and yes, how easy (or nearly impossible) it is to walk from one place to another.

You might be thinking, "Okay, but isn't that just how cities are in America? Isn't everywhere car-dependent?" The answer might surprise you: not exactly. While it's true that most American cities built after World War II (1945 onward) were designed primarily for cars, many American cities were actually built before cars became dominant. And in those cities, you can still walk places, take buses and trains, and live without owning a vehicle.

Los Angeles is unusual because it experienced most of its massive growth *during* the car era. Between 1920 and 1980, LA's population exploded from less than a million people to over 11 million. And during this entire period, cars were already the main way people got around. So instead of adapting old walkable neighborhoods to accommodate cars (like older East Coast cities did), LA was essentially designed from scratch with cars as the priority.

This is what urban planners call "urban sprawl."

Understanding Urban Sprawl

Urban sprawl is one of those terms you've probably heard, maybe in a news story about cities or in a conversation about the environment. But what does it actually mean?

Urban sprawl refers to the way some cities spread out—far out—over large areas of land, with buildings and neighborhoods separated by huge distances. In a sprawling city, you might drive 30 minutes just to reach the nearest grocery store. Schools, parks, restaurants, and shopping centers are all spread apart, connected mainly by wide roads and highways. There's usually very little you can walk to; almost everything requires a car.

Think of it like this: imagine your school. In a walkable city, around your school you'd find apartment buildings, houses, small shops, restaurants, parks, and other neighborhood amenities—probably within a 10 or 15-minute walk. Kids could walk to school, meet friends at a nearby cafe, or grab a snack at a corner store. Everything feels connected.

In a sprawling city like LA, your school might be surrounded by a massive parking lot, a strip mall, and maybe some offices—but not much else. To get anywhere else—a friend's house, a movie theater, a park—you'd need to drive. And those other places aren't close by either. They're scattered across miles and miles of development.

Urban sprawl has several defining characteristics:

Low density: Instead of many people living close together in apartment buildings and townhouses, sprawled cities have fewer people spread across huge areas. Los Angeles has about 8,000 people per square mile, which sounds like a lot. But Manhattan (the densely packed core of New York City) has 71,000 people per square mile. And actually, LA's population density is lower than many major cities around the world. The reason LA feels so crowded is that everything is so spread out.

Separation of uses: In walkable cities, different activities are mixed together. A neighborhood might have apartments above shops, a school a few blocks from a park, a restaurant next to a bookstore. In sprawling cities, everything is separated. You have "residential areas" (only houses and apartments), "commercial areas" (only stores and offices), "industrial areas" (factories and warehouses), and so on. Each of these zones is separate from the others, often by miles.

Dependence on cars: This is the big one. Because everything is spread out and separated, you essentially need a car to do anything. Walking is difficult or dangerous because sidewalks are missing, crosswalks are rare, and distances are too great. Public transportation is difficult to provide efficiently when everyone is so spread out.

Network of highways and wide roads: Sprawling cities need lots of roads to connect all these separated places. In LA, this means an intricate web of freeways, boulevards, and arterials—roads designed to move cars quickly, not to make walking pleasant or safe.

Here's a number that puts LA's sprawl in perspective: the Los Angeles metropolitan area covers about 4,850 square miles. That's bigger than the entire states of Rhode Island and Delaware. New York City, by contrast, covers only 302 square miles. So LA is roughly 16 times larger than NYC, yet both have roughly the same number of people (LA has about 10 million in its metro area; NYC has about 20 million). This gives you a sense of just how spread out LA is.

The Birth of a Car City

To understand why LA ended up this way, we need to travel back in time—way back to the late 1800s. Los Angeles in 1890 was a very different place. Picture dusty streets, horse-drawn wagons, small buildings, and a population of only about 50,000 people (that's smaller than many towns today). Back then, if you wanted to get around LA, you walked, rode a horse, or maybe took a trolley (the streetcars that ran on rails through the city).

But then something interesting happened: the streetcar arrived. And the streetcar would play a crucial role in shap