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I don't know if when either of those neighborhoods were built they were worrying about whether they were "urban" or not. Neither of them looks really super urban, the Pittburgh one is older, probably a streetcar suburb, the Seattle one has some post-war and more recent infill in basically a comfortable residential area near was one of the wealthier older neighborhoods of the city. The trees look nice in the Seattle neighborhood, I doubt anyone who lives there gives a crap if they make them look less "urban", the Pittsburgh neighborhood could honestly use a little greenery.
Pittsburgh will basically win in terms of most "urban" as the word on here is basically a metric to describe how Northeastern a city looks(New York being the pinnacle, Philadelphia and Boston next in line and so on)...
I don't know if when either of those neighborhoods were built they were worrying about whether they were "urban" or not. Neither of them looks really super urban, the Pittburgh one is older, probably a streetcar suburb, the Seattle one has some post-war and more recent infill in basically a comfortable residential area near was one of the wealthier older neighborhoods of the city. The trees look nice in the Seattle neighborhood, I doubt anyone who lives there gives a crap if they make them look less "urban", the Pittsburgh neighborhood could honestly use a little greenery.
Pittsburgh will basically win in terms of most "urban" as the word on here is basically a metric to describe how Northeastern a city looks(New York being the pinnacle, Philadelphia and Boston next in line and so on)...
And you don't agree with that? What style is more urban and intense than that?
That street in Pittsburgh looks like a dump. I would much rather live in that Seattle view, and they seem to be about equal in "urban-ness".
I mean, what is it about the greenery of the PGH streetview that is so much more urban than the Seattle view? 3' less of a setback?
Yes, that's what this has been about basically. That is the problem with Seattle. The Comprehensive plan and Zoning code made the city that way. There is nothing that can be done to change that in our lifetime.
Yes, that's what this has been about basically. That is the problem with Seattle. The Comprehensive plan and Zoning code made the city that way. There is nothing that can be done to change that in our lifetime.
The Comprehensive Plan of Seattle was adopted in 1994--a lot of those neighborhoods that have been shown were built up well before that.
High-density in Pittsburgh is found in distinct clusters. Looking at block groups fails, not only because of topography, but because industrial/nonresidential areas are interspaced throughout the city. We're not one of those places like Seattle which has a single huge, totally depopulated industrial zone.
As an example, my own neighborhood of Lawrenceville is a dense, rowhouse neighborhood. But the block group I am in does not come out as particularly dense. This is because around half of it (the portion towards the river) is comprised of large industrial properties.
Overall Oakland has the highest population density, as it's largely become a student slum to support University of Pittsburgh (Pitt) students. The neighborhood is a mix of apartments, rowhouses, and single-family housing, but almost all of the latter has been subdivided and/or rented out to dozens of students.
I do agree, however, that urban is more a question of structural density than population density. Within Pittsburgh, however, only a small amount of neighborhoods have urban feel. These include Downtown, the lower North Side (Manchester, Allegheny West, Central Northside, and East Allegheny), Troy Hill, Lawrenceville, Bloomfield, Oakland, and South Side Flats. The rest of Pittsburgh neighborhoods don't have a true urban feel, either because they were built up with detached SFH, or because they've been so wrecked by bad infill and/or demolitions there's no there there anymore.
Shadyside is one of the densest neighborhoods in the city (aside from the western third, which is a mansion district more or less), but it's a mix of detached Victorian housing (some subdivided, some not) and various mid-century apartment blocks/towers, so it feels somewhat bucolic even though it's actually really dense in terms of population.
I honestly like the way Seattle incorporates vegetation on this street over the Pittsburgh one. There isn't any in the Pittsburgh view. In fact throughout Seattle's Capitol Hill neighborhood its a pretty good job.
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