| Long Beach has always been a more industrial city than Los Angeles. |
Balboa Island, Newport Beach |
Thank you PP - Balboa Island is EXACTLY what I was looking for. Wow. Seriously. I am open to more suggestions here as well as my budget is low for that area but thanks to you - I at least have a great neighborhood to look for places in. |
You should have asked for small ritzy areas. Plenty of those. |
Okay, any tips? I'm just not looking for an area that is suburbanesque with mansions or McMansions and large lots. |
Sorry, sarcasm didn't come through. You said diverse area and then said that Balboa is perfect. Balboa is white. LA county is not diverse when it comes to neighborhoods and getting less and less diverse. Did you ever look at the racial heat map? |
Meant to say LA and adjacent counties. |
OP here. I'm not from that area so I didn't know that and I didn't even know there was a 'racial heat map'. It doesn't help that the Wiki on Balboa doesn't mention the population census. But I was responding to the fact that Balboa Island seems to meet all my perimeters as far as healthy/crunchy, architectural details of the housing, closeness of the water features, and walkability. Living in Washington, DC which I think is quite diverse - linguistically, racially, and ethnically even if my neighborhood is majority white - I would like to find something similar. |
http://demographics.virginia.edu/DotMap/ My impression of DC is that actually has diverse areas. I have not seen much of it in California. It's pretty segregated, especially in the areas that look like you describe. |
OP, if you are looking for something near the water, it's just going to be expensive. i really can't think of many exceptions in the LA metro area. Long Beach, however, IS one exception. It is also very diverse. Do you have a family and require public schools, or are you single? If you are single, you have more options as you can rent an apartment anywhere. Marina del Rey, Play del Rey, Venice are all areas that you could potentially find an apartment in, depending on your budget ($2,500/mo for a studio or one bedroom might be possible). They are diverse, but not how East Coast folks think of diversity. In California, when we think of diversity, we mean it includes a diverse array of races, ethnicities. That usually means, Latino, Asian, Middle Eastern folks. Black population is fairly small in CA, although there is a vibrant black community in Long Beach! Newport Beach, btw, is very white and definitely not "crunchy"!! It is "healthy" in that tennis, golf, boating, surfing sort of way
There is nothing similar in Southern California to DC. good luck! |
OP here - Single and public schools not necessary unless we're considering its advantage for property value purposes. I'm not sure what the bolded means, we think of diversity in the same way on the east coast and I think I mentioned that above - diverse racial, ethnic, and linguistic overtones. Healthy is good as far as the community. What do you mean there's nothing similar in Southern California to DC? In what regard? Thanks! |
In many regards! Did you think they're similar? |
I'm asking for examples - thank you. |
DP. An example from today. We are walking through a local park, fairly large, walking distance to the ocean. While you see all different ethnic groups in the park, they are fully segregated. There is a little league games (mostly white, some Hispanic), a Persian birthday in one area, a Hispanic birthday in the other, some white people practicing golf swings, a softball game with one side black and one side white-Hispanic (all coming to the field in completely segregated groups). Any coastal areas will have lots of people active, that's a given. I know some very diverse runners groups, typically formed through work (colleagues and former colleagues), ironically all living in non-diverse neighborhoods. |
|
Frankly, cute little SoCal beach cities are not going to be very diverse. I find while SoCal is diverse as a whole, communities are pretty self(?)-segregated.
If you take out the diversity requirement, you should look at areas in or near Santa Barbara. |