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Another thing I should mention is that within city limits DC is significantly smaller than Philly or Boston. However, since the DC area is so spread out, many of DC's suburbs also have downtowns of their own or areas with fairly vibrant activity.
As it was mentioned before, Boston actually has smaller borders than DC by a bit. Here are the populations & density:
Washington DC: 606,314 in 62 sq miles (9,779 ppsm)
Boston: 656,397 in 48 sq miles (13,675 ppsm)
Philadelphia: 1,556,396 in 134 sq miles (11,615 ppsm)
I think the point you were trying to make was that despite the small physical borders, DC is dense and packs a good punch (correct me if I'm wrong). I definitely agree with that, but it's not above Boston or Philadelphia statistically. I'm with kidphilly on this though...overall I'm not sure how this connects to the downtown area.
As it was mentioned before, Boston actually has smaller borders than DC by a bit. Here are the populations & density:
Washington DC: 606,314 in 62 sq miles (9,779 ppsm)
Boston: 656,397 in 48 sq miles (13,675 ppsm)
Philadelphia: 1,556,396 in 134 sq miles (11,615 ppsm)
I think the point you were trying to make was that despite the small physical borders, DC is dense and packs a good punch (correct me if I'm wrong). I definitely agree with that, but it's not above Boston or Philadelphia statistically. I'm with kidphilly on this though...overall I'm not sure how this connects to the downtown area.
I guess Boston has a lot of water areas within the city limits, so that made the total area seem larger. Somewhere I thought I read that Boston incorporated former suburbs within the city limits. Is this true?
I was making a side observation that people who live in the DC area don't always go to downtown DC for a more vibrant experience. That's just the lifestyle here. There's a considerable amount of activity in the denser parts of VA and Md suburbs like Arlington, Alexandria, Tyson's Corner (lately), Bethesda, Silver Spring, Rockville, etc.
Last edited by BigCityDreamer; 11-26-2010 at 10:20 AM..
Well when you referred to forum members discussing three urban centers as "yokals and hillbillies" so I assumed you might have had too much to drink..
This discussion is about the central business district and not about the neighborhoods adjacent to the CBD - so you just have to accept that DC's downtown does lack when compared to downtown Boston and Philly. In terms of size and amount office space, yes DC's downtown is the largest of the three, but this discussion is about many other aspects of downtown as well.
You have to admit that your neighborhood of Adams Morgan (which is not downtown DC) is so much more vibrant than downtown DC at night. Other than downtown DC's Gallery Place Chinatown, the rest of downtown DC when compared to Boston and Philly is not as vibrant.
I guess Boston has a lot of water areas within the city limits, so that made the total area seem larger. Somewhere I thought I read that Boston incorporated former suburbs within the city limits. Is this true?
Technically Boston's total area is 89 square miles...but 41 of that is water. If you look at a map, you'll see there are many islands in Boston Harbor...those are technically part of the city, so the entire harbor becomes part of Boston.
In terms of annexing suburbs...Boston annexed 8 or 9 suburbs between 1804 and 1912...it's funny that even by adding those towns, Boston is still only 48 square miles. I guess there have been unsuccessful attempts to annex Brookline, Cambridge, and Chelsea. According to the Wiki article, Brookline was actually the first town/city in the country to reject annexation.
If Boston had successfully annexed those three cities, the stats would be:
855,003 people in 63 miles (13,571 ppsm). So given the same borders as DC, Boston would have about 250,000 more people than the District.
Quote:
I was making a side observation that people who live in the DC area don't always go to downtown DC for a more vibrant experience. There's a considerable amount of activity in the denser parts of VA and Md suburbs like Arlington, Alexandria, Tyson's Corner (lately), Bethesda, Silver Spring, Rockville, etc.
Well the same is true for Boston and I'm sure it's the same in Philadelphia too. For Boston, if you're not downtown you can check out places like Brighton Center, Brookline Village/Cleveland Circle, Broadway (South Boston), Harvard Square (Cambridge), Davis Square (Somerville), Marina Bay (Quincy), Landsdowne St next to Fenway, etc...
[quote=tmac9wr;16788819]
Washington DC: 606,314 in 62 sq miles (9,779 ppsm)
Boston: 656,397 in 48 sq miles (13,675 ppsm)
Philadelphia: 1,556,396 in 134 sq miles (11,615 ppsm)
quote]
Off topic, but I am suprised by growth in the Boston numbers (in particular).
These are based on some projections by a private firm based on Census data. I believe the most recent Census estimates from last year are around 645k. Implying Boston added 12k in the past year?? I'm not sure where all these new people would be living? New construction has been pretty slow in the past year or two.
Even the Census growth from 596,000 in 2000 to 645,000 seems very high?
Part of me wonders if all this growth isn't more better counting of the student/ group house population rather than actual pop growth?
Washington DC: 606,314 in 62 sq miles (9,779 ppsm)
Boston: 656,397 in 48 sq miles (13,675 ppsm)
Philadelphia: 1,556,396 in 134 sq miles (11,615 ppsm)
Off topic, but I am suprised by growth in the Boston numbers (in particular).
These are based on some projections by a private firm based on Census data. I believe the most recent Census estimates from last year are around 645k. Implying Boston added 12k in the past year?? I'm not sure where all these new people would be living? New construction has been pretty slow in the past year or two.
Even the Census growth from 596,000 in 2000 to 645,000 seems very high?
Part of me wonders if all this growth isn't more better counting of the student/ group house population rather than actual pop growth?
Yea, I remember the 645,000 count too...I was just basing the figures off of the thread that was posted a few days ago.
As for the big jump from 596,000 to 645,000, I don't think that's too high at all. There have been many condo projects in downtown (Ritz Carlton Towers, 45 Province, Archstone, etc)...obviously that's not going to account for all the growth, but there has been a ton of smaller projects in all of the neighborhoods in the city. It's not the huge projects that really add numbers to the city, it's the hundreds of small ones...at least that seems to be the case in the non-boomtown cities.
Yea, I remember the 645,000 count too...I was just basing the figures off of the thread that was posted a few days ago.
As for the big jump from 596,000 to 645,000, I don't think that's too high at all. There have been many condo projects in downtown (Ritz Carlton Towers, 45 Province, Archstone, etc)...obviously that's not going to account for all the growth, but there has been a ton of smaller projects in all of the neighborhoods in the city. It's not the huge projects that really add numbers to the city, it's the hundreds of small ones...at least that seems to be the case in the non-boomtown cities.
Yeah, not saying the numbers are impossible.
It's just the Census Bureau's estimates of population to occupied housing units seems very odd.
Basically, according to Census all of the grow from 2000-2009 in Boston has come from larger household sizes.
Additionally, the city only added 2,500 total units from 2000-2008 and then from 2008 to 2009 added 12,000??
This isn't supported in the Boston permit data which was around 5,000 total units between 2005-2008. http://www.chapa.org/files/f_1220886185HousingReportCard20062.pdf (broken link)
This leads me to believe there maybe some methodological issues behind the growth, such as trying to count students better, etc.
That's some very interesting data! I always feel it's such a crap-shoot when there are students involved. Because there is supposedly somewhere in the range of 150,000 students in Boston city proper. What students do they count in the census? Only those who are living off-campus? Those who claim themselves independent of their families? I don't know...it's just weird haha
I think you should change the list order from downtown battle to San Fran, Boston, Dc being that the top ones are Philly, Chi, New York City.
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