Kristin Eberhard from NRDC weighs in with an analysis that examines the density and lay-out of Los Angeles County and finds that a relatively small number of residents live in sprawling suburban neighborhoods — most people are likely to live at a density of about 14,000 people per square mile. The numbers show many more people are living at high densities than in the city of Chicago, with its skyline of skyscrapers. And because LA has so many downtowns and dispersed job centers, only 2.5% of jobs are located in downtown Los Angeles, compared to 20% in NYC and 19% in Washington DC.

Kristin concludes: "LA faces a public transit challenge. How to connect a dispersed, evenly dense population with multiple jobs centers and residential areas in a seamless way that is competitive with cars? My answer: we can’t just do what other cities do and hope for the best." She thinks we need a gridded system, and not the more traditional spiderweb system that focuses on downtown . . .

Check out her graphs and maps.