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View Poll Results: most urban?
SF 167 31.87%
LA 71 13.55%
DC 45 8.59%
Philly 165 31.49%
Boston 76 14.50%
Voters: 524. You may not vote on this poll

 
 
Old 10-01-2011, 08:54 AM
 
Location: Crooklyn, New York
31,887 posts, read 34,388,425 times
Reputation: 14971

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I'm actually surprised more people didn't vote for Boston. Boston has just about as much land as SF (48 sq. miles). During its peak in 1950, its population density was just as high as San Francisco's, even with an airport and several acres of university property within its city limits (I counted 31 just in Boston's city limits). Just going off of the look and feel of the city, I'd retract my vote for Philly and say that Boston's the most urban. You've got the extensive subway/trolley system, the dense outlying residential neighborhoods in Revere, Somerville, and Cambridge, lots of multi-level apartment buildings, underground higways/tunnels, suspension bridges, the tightly-packed residential areas in Boston proper, etc. Yeah, I'd say Beantown.
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Old 10-01-2011, 09:03 AM
 
Location: Crooklyn, New York
31,887 posts, read 34,388,425 times
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Does Boston have the most extensive network of tunnels in the world? This guy's statement at the beginning of the video, "Damn, this is a long ass tunnel," pretty much encapsulates my feelings every time I drove this route.


long tunnel in boston - YouTube
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Old 10-01-2011, 09:29 AM
 
Location: The City
22,379 posts, read 38,686,087 times
Reputation: 7975
Quote:
Originally Posted by slo1318 View Post
Its just silly to list every industrial facility, airport, and 7-11. Every city is composed of these elements. I dont think you can prove 42 square miles. Rah, just posted for San Francisco, and although I think that could be a fascinating way to look at cities, I dont know how it could be accurate.
Just checking a few facts from your posts; Fairmount park system is closer to 9000 acres than 10000. I consider that skewed because its rounded up from 9200. Why not just put 9200?
Fairmount Park (http://www.fairmountpark.org/ParkSystemOverview.asp - broken link)

Refineries; how'd you come with that. Sounded odd to me, so a quick fact check.....Texas, Louisiana and California refines over 50% of the nations oil. Sunoco is very large, but ranks #10 in the US in capacity. Of the top 140 refineries in the US, 5 are in Pennsylvania.
Top U.S. Refineries - Energy Information Administration. Energy Rankings

Fairmont does NOT include all parks in Philly so yes I rounded up to 10K which is VERY accurate (actually a little light as this excludes all the National Historic Park land in the city like Independence Mall (Over a sq mile alone and excluded commonly know as the most historic sq mile in America, population zero), the Germantown Battlefields and Penn Treaty Park etc.).

All place have stuff agree but one these aspects, airports, huge ports, refineries Philly skews towards larger amounts within urban city limits compared to most.

On the oil refining you excluded the NJ and DE refining facilities all part of the port of the Philadelphia.

7-11 - Yep the produce distribution center is a 7-11 New digs for Food Distribution Center | PlanPhilly: Planning Philadelphia's Future
http://search.yahoo.com/r/_ylt=A0oG7...uce_Market.pdf

Philadelphia Food Distribution Center Moving to the Navy Yard - Science News - redOrbit


On Airports there are two PHL and Northeast combined account for 11 sq miles of land area within the city

I will track all your little numbers down but hae to run to a soccer game now and heaven forbid they show Philly as dense.

Can I clude swamp land (I excluded and yes there is quite a bit) like the beaches included cause I will then exceed the 42.


And on your bolded, ACTUALLY I KNOW it is. Post something to disprove or dont ever call me out again your antics so SF oozing I actually feel bad for you. And yes as a city Philly and port is known as the third largest refiner of crude after those ports I listed. I never it was larger than the STATE of CA in this regard.

FWIW a lot of people do think Philly to be more urban than SF, it larger and more densely developed but am positive your brain will not be able to handle that truth.

And no not every city has the industrial concentration of Philadelphia (may not be a great thing today) but Philly is and industrial giant, always was. Are you now going to suggest that SF had the industrial concentration of Philadelphia EVER? I guess to the SF folks it must have because how could it possibly lose any single category....

Last edited by kidphilly; 10-01-2011 at 09:42 AM..
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Old 10-01-2011, 10:36 AM
 
Location: Philadelphia, PA
1,335 posts, read 1,651,346 times
Reputation: 344
I just did a photo shoot of the new produce distribution center on Essington Ave. World class facility. Funny, anybody who calls it a "7-11" should take note, disparaging comments about Philadelphia are usually about as far off as that comparison. Here's a pic:


Philadelphia Produce Distribution Center (http://www.flickr.com/photos/imagicdigital/6200768860/ - broken link) by imagic digital (http://www.flickr.com/people/imagicdigital/ - broken link), on Flickr



Quote:
Originally Posted by kidphilly View Post
Fairmont does NOT include all parks in Philly so yes I rounded up to 10K which is VERY accurate (actually a little light as this excludes all the National Historic Park land in the city like Independence Mall (Over a sq mile alone and excluded commonly know as the most historic sq mile in America, population zero), the Germantown Battlefields and Penn Treaty Park etc.).

All place have stuff agree but one these aspects, airports, huge ports, refineries Philly skews towards larger amounts within urban city limits compared to most.

On the oil refining you excluded the NJ and DE refining facilities all part of the port of the Philadelphia.

7-11 - Yep the produce distribution center is a 7-11 New digs for Food Distribution Center | PlanPhilly: Planning Philadelphia's Future
http://search.yahoo.com/r/_ylt=A0oG7...uce_Market.pdf

Philadelphia Food Distribution Center Moving to the Navy Yard - Science News - redOrbit


On Airports there are two PHL and Northeast combined account for 11 sq miles of land area within the city

I will track all your little numbers down but hae to run to a soccer game now and heaven forbid they show Philly as dense.

Can I clude swamp land (I excluded and yes there is quite a bit) like the beaches included cause I will then exceed the 42.


And on your bolded, ACTUALLY I KNOW it is. Post something to disprove or dont ever call me out again your antics so SF oozing I actually feel bad for you. And yes as a city Philly and port is known as the third largest refiner of crude after those ports I listed. I never it was larger than the STATE of CA in this regard.

FWIW a lot of people do think Philly to be more urban than SF, it larger and more densely developed but am positive your brain will not be able to handle that truth.

And no not every city has the industrial concentration of Philadelphia (may not be a great thing today) but Philly is and industrial giant, always was. Are you now going to suggest that SF had the industrial concentration of Philadelphia EVER? I guess to the SF folks it must have because how could it possibly lose any single category....
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Old 10-01-2011, 12:23 PM
 
Location: Los Altos Hills, CA
36,628 posts, read 67,158,658 times
Reputation: 21164
Quote:
Originally Posted by RaymondChandlerLives View Post
Btw, does anyone know offhand how many square miles of land SF loses due to parks, the Presidio, the port, etc, etc? Because I can definitely see these two cities going toe to toe in density if all things are equal.
Basically the more we zoom out, LA wins and the more we zoom in, SF wins.

I was surprised that I didnt find any Boston or DC neighborhoods over the 30K+ threshold in C-D maps.

Anyhow, I made this chart of neighborhoods with 30,000+persons per square mile.
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Old 10-01-2011, 12:43 PM
 
Location: In the heights
36,916 posts, read 38,826,491 times
Reputation: 20929
Chicago should be thrown into this, shouldn't it?

I wonder what other cities in the US would get us something comparable. I know Miami and its metro gets really dense in parts and maxes out around 20000 ppsm in its neighborhoods. Anything else? Maybe some surprises in some of the sunbelt cities? It doesn't even have to be a huge metro, but just something that's comparably urban or dense at the core.

Also, do those neighborhood stats include overlap and recounting of the shared population in the overlaps?
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Old 10-01-2011, 12:55 PM
rah
 
Location: Oakland
3,314 posts, read 9,202,157 times
Reputation: 2538
Quote:
Originally Posted by 18Montclair View Post
Basically the more we zoom out, LA wins and the more we zoom in, SF wins.

I was surprised that I didnt find any Boston or DC neighborhoods over the 30K+ threshold in C-D maps.

Anyhow, I made this chart of neighborhoods with 30,000+persons per square mile.
And that's even selling SF short. I compiled this data last night, based on zipcodes:



That's right, in the core 16.7 square miles of SF, there are 531,398 residents, for a density of 31,820 pp/sq. mile. I would be willing to bet that no city but NYC (of course), and maybe LA or Chicago can match/surpass that kind of density within their core 17 square miles. The breakdown by individual zipcode is as follows (2009 estimates):

94123 - 27,077 people (1.0 square mile)
94115 - 40,162 (1.1 square miles)
94117 - 51,156 (1.4)
94114 - 42,358 (1.4)
94110 - 106,331 (2.4)
94107 - 27,914 (2.5)
94103 - 33,065 (1.3)
94105 - 3,147 (0.3)
94104 - 522 (0.1)
94111 - 4,825 (0.5)
94108 - 15,021 (0.3)
94133 - 32,968 (0.7)
94109 - 68,665 (1.2)
94102 - 32,586 (0.7)
94118 - 45,601 (1.8)

All stats were taken from City-Data. Also, the area outlined in the map literally is SF's urban core (more or less), the zip code boundaries line up pretty well. With a few exceptions, once you leave those boundaries the city is decidedly less dense/hectic, with many more single family homes (still wall to wall though mostly), most of SF's parkland, and the majority of SF's industrial stuff (there's a decent amount of light industrial stuff in the core too though, along the waterfront by Potrero Hill and in north Potrero, as well as in southern SOMA and the northeast corner of the Mission...mostly warehouses).

Last edited by rah; 10-01-2011 at 01:09 PM..
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Old 10-01-2011, 01:48 PM
 
Location: The City
22,379 posts, read 38,686,087 times
Reputation: 7975
Quote:
Originally Posted by 18Montclair View Post
Basically the more we zoom out, LA wins and the more we zoom in, SF wins.

I was surprised that I didnt find any Boston or DC neighborhoods over the 30K+ threshold in C-D maps.

Anyhow, I made this chart of neighborhoods with 30,000+persons per square mile.
I continually wonder on this, these on your list are not even close to some of the highest density areas and there are larger areas even at the zip level and more sq miles. But again pure density does not singularly driver urbanity in the first place.

Same soure CD

zip 19103 .7 sq miles and density of 41.3K
http://www.city-data.com/zips/19103.html

zip 19104 3.0 sq miles and density of 27.3K
http://www.city-data.com/zips/19104.html

zip 19107 .5 sq miles and density of 46.1K
http://www.city-data.com/zips/19107.html

zip 19146 1.6 sq miles and density of 35.2K
http://www.city-data.com/zips/19146.html

zip 19147 1.7 miles and a density of 31.5 ppsm
http://www.city-data.com/zips/19147.html

There are also many tracts in larger South and North Philly zips that have large uninhabited industrial and port zones

I think the neighborhood data on CD is from 2000 whereas the zip data are more current. The central part of Philly grew by over 20% so lots of movement in some of these neighborhoods recently. Also just reviewing a few neighborhoods Rittnhouse .7 sq miles was 29.9 ppsm in 2000, it has well exceeded that in the last ten years (9 30+ story condos have been built in this neighborhood alone since 2000) etc.

Last edited by kidphilly; 10-01-2011 at 02:06 PM..
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Old 10-01-2011, 02:14 PM
 
Location: where u wish u lived
896 posts, read 1,162,051 times
Reputation: 254
Quote:
Originally Posted by 18Montclair View Post
Basically the more we zoom out, LA wins and the more we zoom in, SF wins.

I was surprised that I didnt find any Boston or DC neighborhoods over the 30K+ threshold in C-D maps.

Anyhow, I made this chart of neighborhoods with 30,000+persons per square mile.
Sorry montclair, but this chart has to be wrong, I've been to boston before and it definitely has some very dense neighborhoods, it should have atleast a couple of areas for sure.
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Old 10-01-2011, 02:22 PM
rah
 
Location: Oakland
3,314 posts, read 9,202,157 times
Reputation: 2538
Quote:
Originally Posted by CaliSon View Post
Sorry montclair, but this chart has to be wrong, I've been to boston before and it definitely has some very dense neighborhoods, it should have atleast a couple of areas for sure.
Going by census tract, Boston definitely has multiple areas well above 30,000 people per square mile...i dunno if they comprise entire neighborhoods though. But on the other hand i've noticed that neighborhood boundaries as definined on CD are kind of weird sometimes, so it could simply be lack of correct data on this website, and Boston does actually have at least one neighborhood of 30,000+ pp/sq. mi (it seems like it should). A Bostonian would know better lol.
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