Quote:
Originally Posted by
grimslade 
Then why is it called downtown?
Because every town in California has a district called "downtown." It's usually the place where the town got started, but that people abandoned and left for dead decades ago. LA's downtown is particularly bleak because there was so much room to grow in every direction that there was no necessity to stay downtown. Government never abandoned the "downtowns" and in the '60s and '70s began to restrict development elsewhere to try to force people to build downtown. This succeeded rather spectacularly in LA, in terms of sheer square footage erected.
San Francisco is the great exception because, hemmed in by water on three sides, it could not sprawl out of its downtown. And The City actually did the opposite of what other CA cities did. Rather than try to concentrate density where it had always been (Market, Montgomery, & Calfornia Streets) they started to block it there only to see it crop up south of Market (which had been low rise since the Gold Rush) and into Chinatown and elsewhere.
Anyway, SF's downtown is arguably the only real, functioning downtown in all of California.
