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July 26, 2007
Going BIG in LA
Guest Day Editor LA City Nerd will be joining LAist with a few posts throughout the day. Read the introductory interview here and check out the nerd's blog.
Everyone knows Los Angeles is the second largest City in the US, but here are some LA City Nerd facts you might not have known...
1. LA City has the largest urban forest of any City in the US.
2. LA City has the largest municipal street system in the country.
3. LA City has the largest municipal park in the country in Griffith Park.
4. 44% of people living in LA were born outside of the US.
5. The Port of LA is the busiest in the nation.
6. There are more freeway interchanges in LA (Boyle Heights) than any other community.
7. LA was once the wine producing capital and the cow capital of the US - but that was 2 centuries ago.
8. Los Angeles is the birthplace of California as a US state in the Campo de Cahuenga.
9. There are more Native Americans living in Los Angeles than anywhere else outside of the reservations. The same is true for a number of nationalities who find their population's largest concentration outside their native country to be in the City.
10. Los Angeles is older than our Nation's capital: Washington, D.C. (Take that, DCist!)
Photo by dailydose via Flickr
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The Militant hates to argue with The Nerd, whom he respects immensely, and is quick to admit that without the Nerd there would be no Militant. But even at the expense of being pedantic, or worse, being considered more nerdy than LACN, the Militant, though always extolling the virtues of this great City, is always in search of the truth, and grudgingly offers these points of disagreement with some of the entries in the Nerd's list:
1 & 3: Even before the fire (actually we had two of them this year) charred our great urban forest, unfortunately Griffith Park (4,210 acres) is neither the largest urban park in the US nor the largest urban forest. That award goes to Portland, Oregon's Forest Park, which boasts in excess of 5,000 acres. But still, in the eyes of pop culture, America really is all about Los Angeles and New York with nothing buy flyover territory in between, Col. Griffith's huge-ass donation still dwarfs NYC's Central Park (843 acres).
8: Is generally correct in paving the way towards statehood, but didn't it create California as an independent nation (hence "California Republic") first before we joined the Union?
9: The largest-community-of-(insert nationality here)-outside-of-(Insert country here) is generally true, but for the Armenian community, now that the Soviet Union has collapsed, the largest concentration of Armenians outside of Yerevan is not in Los Angeles (or even Glendale), but Moscow, Russia.
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I'm going to have to go on some defense for the nerd here right now Militant :)
But when we refer to the Urban Forest, we are not referring to just Griffith Park, we are speaking of all the trees in the city lining the streets and on private properties.
As to Portland, Oregon's Forest Park, I'll give you that because I am not going to research that at 4 a.m.
Bed time...
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MilAn,
Just wanted to source you on your facts. When you mentioned that Portland had the largest urban park and/or urban forest, I thought, "Oh yeah, of course. That makes sense."
Though Wikipedia says that Forest Park is "is over 5,000 acres," the Portland Parks & Rec site says that it's only 770.28 acres, and then further down it contradicts itself by saying "Forest Park now includes over 5,100 wooded acres." I'm guessing that the Portland Parks & Rec people are growing weed in Forest Park, subsequently smoking it and thus are unaware of the actual numbers.
Perhaps the "largest municipal park" designation has something to do with contiguous acreage, making the numbers a bit subjective?
To complicate this further, Griffith Park makes the distinction of having both "natural terrain" and "landscaped parkland and picnic areas." Perhaps it's a problem of terminology that confuses these things. Based on this, it may be that Forest Park is over 5000 acres in toto, but has only 770.28 acres of landscaped/developed park areas, which may be less than Griffith Park (but I can't find that number anywhere).
Second, I'm not sure what is meant by the term "urban forest" in both the original post and your response. Surely, Zach can't be correct counting all of the trees on city streets and private properties. Those trees in the sidewalk, spaced every 50 feet can't be considered "forest," can they?
Now if you want to include open space, such as all of the mountainy areas in Los Angeles, I might back up the "largest urban forest" claim, but much of the wild open space in L.A. is chaparral, which also can't be considered "forest," can it?
I guess I'm not refuting your claims, but rather just bringing up more questions. Anyone have answers?
-Rob
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Rob: The Militant would love to be wrong on 1 & 3, so thanks for bringing up those issues. Regardless of whether we hold the title or not, the Militant still needs to stress that Los Angeles needs more park space Citywide, as we only have 0.012 acres of open space per resident. The Militant encourages all Angelenos to fight for more park space in their communities -- rampant, uncontrolled densified development will NOT work unless there is a supporting infrastructure, which includes parks and open space.
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Griffith Park is far from the largest municipal park in the country. It's easily researched and found out. It's not even the largest municipal park in the state. There are good facts about this city, but an overabundance of forest and park space is not one of them.