Even David Byrne Gets It About Density
His take on the perfect city, in the WSJ of all places:
If a city doesn’t have sufficient density, as in L.A., then strange things happen. It’s human nature for us to look at one another— we’re social animals after all. But when the urban situation causes the distance between us to increase and our interactions to be less frequent we have to use novel means to attract attention: big hair, skimpy clothes and plastic surgery. We become walking billboards.
Of course we all know that in the United States, L.A. is second only to New York City in terms of population density. And if you go by metropolitan region, L.A. actually ranks number one. But technicalities aside, I still say Byrne gets it.