Metro Metrics

I was reading an old essay by the architect Michael Maltzan (that I found thanks to WHERE) about how Los Angeles, the global poster-name of endless urban sprawl, may have reached its geographical boundaries and has started to invest in density. Maltzan is of course not alone in pointing out that Los Angeles is buildings inwards and upwards after decades of spreading outwards, but it made me interested in how metropolitan LA’s density has evolved over the past few decades.

I’ve used the US Census Bureau’s current definition of the Los Angeles MSA (which includes Los Angeles County, Orange County, San Bernardino County, Riverside County and Ventura County, a definition that hasn’t changed since 1981 after previously have defined the LA MSA as including only Los Angeles county) and calculated how the number of Angelenos per square mile has changed between 1980-2010.

This is far from ideal, since using the same boundaries for a growing population is the equivalent to filling up a bucket of water and commenting that the amount of water is increasing as a share of the bucket’s volume. More interesting, would be to look at the actual geographical boundaries of the built-up metropolitan area instead of using whole counties. But that is easier said than done, so looking at whole counties will do as a pointless Saturday diversion.

Here is a table over density in the different counties:

And here is percentage change in the different counties: