section_path: Geography/Urban form
section_name: Urban form
paragraph_text: Urban form
  
  Los Angeles has long been famous for its sprawl, but this has to do more with its status in history as the "poster child" of large cities that grew up with suburban-style patterns of development, rather than how it ranks in sprawl among American metro areas today, now that suburban and exurban -style development is present across the country. The Los Angeles–Orange County metro area was the most densely populated "urbanized area" (as defined by the United States Census Bureau) in the United States in 2000, with 7,068 inhabitants per square mile (2,729/km 2). For comparison, the "New York–Newark" Urbanized Area had a population density of 5,309 per square mile (2,050/km 2).
  
  Los Angeles' reputation for sprawl is due to the fact that the city grew from relative obscurity to one of the country's ten largest cities (i.e. 10th largest city in 1920), at a time when suburban patterns of growth first became possible due to electric streetcars and automobiles. The city was also the first large American city where, in the 1920s, major clusters of regional employment, shopping, and culture were already being built outside the traditional downtown areas – in edge cities such as Mid-Wilshire, Miracle Mile and Hollywood. This pattern of growth continued ever outward, more so when the freeway system was built starting in the 1950s; thus Greater Los Angeles was the earliest large American metropolitan area with a decentralized structure. Its major commercial, financial, and cultural institutions are geographically dispersed rather than being concentrated in a single downtown or central area. Also, the population density of Los Angeles proper is low (approximately 8,300 people per square mile) when compared to some other large American cities such as New York City (27,500), San Francisco (17,000), Boston (13,300), and Chicago (11,800). Densities are particularly high within a 5-mile radius of downtown, where some neighborhoods exceed 20,000 people per square mile. What gives the entire Los Angeles metro region a high density is the fact that many of the city's suburbs and satellite cities have high density rates. Within its urbanized areas, Los Angeles is noted for having small lot sizes and low-rise buildings. Buildings in the area are low when compared to other large cities, mainly due to zoning regulations. Los Angeles became a major city just as the Pacific Electric Railway spread population to smaller cities much as interurbans did in East Coast cities. In the first decades of the twentieth century, the area was marked by a network of fairly dense but separate cities linked by rail. The ascendance of the automobile helped fill in the gaps between these commuter towns with lower-density settlements.
  
  Starting in the early twentieth century, there was a large growth in population on the western edges of the city moving to the San Fernando Valley and out into the Conejo Valley in eastern Ventura County. Many working-class whites migrated to this area during the 1960s and 1970s out of East and Central Los Angeles. As a result, there was a large growth in population into the Conejo Valley and into Ventura County through the US 101 corridor. Making the US 101 a full freeway in the 1960s and expansions that followed helped make commuting to Los Angeles easier and opened the way for development westward. Development in Ventura County and along the US 101 corridor remains controversial, with open-space advocates battling those who feel business development is necessary to economic growth. Although the area still has abundant amount of open space and land, almost all of it was put aside and mandated never to be developed as part of the master plan of each city. Because of this, the area which was once a relatively inexpensive area to buy real estate, saw rising real estate prices well into the 2000s. Median home prices in the Conejo Valley for instance, ranged from $700,000 to $2.2 million in 2003. According to Forbes, "it's nearly impossible" to find reasonably priced real estate in California, and the prices will continue to increase.
  
  The Los Angeles area continues to grow, principally on the periphery where new, cheaper, undeveloped areas are being sought. As such, in these areas, populations as well as housing prices exploded, although the housing bubble popped late in the decade of the 2000s. Riverside and San Bernardino counties, which contain large swaths of desert, attracted most of the population increase between 2000 and 2006. Growth continues not only outside the existing urbanized area but also adjacent to existing development in the central areas. As in virtually all US core cities, there is now vigorous residential development in the downtown area with both new buildings and renovation of former office buildings. The Los Angeles Downtown News keeps a list of ongoing development projects, updated every quarter. Over the course of the 21st century, droughts and wildfires have increased in frequency and the region's water security has become a development issue.