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I was thinking more of regions that had tons of large and small cities that melted into a fairly dense belt, as opposed to regions with a few spread out huge cities that have a large population when you add them up.
For instance southern Michigan and northern Indiana are a pretty dense belt of cities that have almost 10,000,000 in an area 185 miles east to west and 100 miles north to south. Grand Rapids to South Bend, Benton Harbor over to Detroit/Toledo.
Likewise Chicago and Milwaukee are 11,400,000 people that flows straight west from South Bend and up the shore of Lake Michigan. Then just to the northwest you have the belt of Rockford/Madison/Janesville that lies close to the Chicago/Milwaukee area. That's another 1,650,000 people.
Move to the east of Toledo and you have a swath of Lima/Dayton/Springfield/Columbus/Sandusky/Cleveland/Akron/Canton/Youngstown/Pittsburgh/Erie/Mansfield/Findly/Wheeling. That's another 10,700,000.
Throw in Indy, Cinci, Lafayette, Fort Wayne that lie just to the west of Springfield/Toledo/Columbus and right south of South Bend/Chicago and there are 5,500,000 more.
A pretty solid region of large cities, as well a millions of people in medium size cities that people very easily overlook.
Well Austin and SA are smaller combined than either but much closer (at least in TX distance at about 80 or so miles) but for perspective nearly the whole population of todays TX would fit in that space if you take the NYC and Philly metros and that excludes the next sets either to the north or south far closer and much greater continuity etc.
The issue in TX is the vast nothingness in between I dont see this area ever really growing together cohesively the metros may infill but the region will still have some pretty big gaps in between
I can agree kidphilly Dallas & Houston will never connect, aleast not in our lifetime. But I do see Dallas & San Antonio connecting way before Dallas and Houston will, heck it's all ready starting to form between Austin to SA then soon after it will stretch all the way up towards Waco, but like you said there will still be miles of open farm land and which isn't a bad thing.
The question is whether you're talking about the cities themselves being dense or there being continuous development between them. The thing the northeast (and to a lesser extent the southeast) has going for it is nearly continuous development in between large cities.
Dense cities with reasonable development in between. There are some gaps, but for the most part even the gaps have reasonable density. When people say "there are undeveloped parts of Boswash", it's important to remember that not all undeveloped-looking areas are created equal. It's also a lot easier for forested areas to look undeveloped--people sometimes assume if there are trees on the side of the road, they are driving through the forest, when in fact there are tons of houses nearby.
Now, the southeast:
Sprawling cities, but with a slight band of density in between. The countryside within the linear region is definitely more than just farmland...plenty of people live in these areas too. There are also a number of small cities between.
Contrast these two examples with Texas:
I can see an argument that San Antonio northwards has some reasonable sustained density, but it's in no way connected to Houston. You have a whole lot of VERY depopulated countryside in between, and with few significant towns and cities in the gap. In all likelihood it will never fill in to any reasonable extent.
California is even more striking:
Here, you've got dense cities, but with basically zero population density in the countryside. From where I'm sitting, it's hard to argue that San Francisco and LA will ever be an interconnected urban region. They will always be separated by hundreds of miles of extremely sparse population.
The Midwest is a strange scenario:
Here there is reasonable density spread mostly all around, and it doesn't seem to follow any sort of linear pattern or anything. There are also some large gaps.
In my opinion, the one that resembles Boswash the most is the Southeast. However, there really needs to be more development in the middle of the chain before it will look pretty continuous--South Carolina needs to pick up the slack, in other words. NE Georgia is the sparsest portion, but is developing quickly (some tracts, even as far as 100mi from Atlanta, grew by 50% over the last census period).
Other regions definitely have more impressive cities themselves, but don't really connect to each other in any meaningful way and have no prospects of doing so. The Midwest, once again, is a strange outlier.
The question is whether you're talking about the cities themselves being dense or there being continuous development between them. The thing the northeast (and to a lesser extent the southeast) has going for it is nearly continuous development in between large cities.
Dense cities with reasonable development in between. There are some gaps, but for the most part even the gaps have reasonable density. When people say "there are undeveloped parts of Boswash", it's important to remember that not all undeveloped-looking areas are created equal. It's also a lot easier for forested areas to look undeveloped--people sometimes assume if there are trees on the side of the road, they are driving through the forest, when in fact there are tons of houses nearby.
Now, the southeast:
Sprawling cities, but with a slight band of density in between. The countryside within the linear region is definitely more than just farmland...plenty of people live in these areas too. There are also a number of small cities between.
Contrast these two examples with Texas:
I can see an argument that San Antonio northwards has some reasonable sustained density, but it's in no way connected to Houston. You have a whole lot of VERY depopulated countryside in between, and with few significant towns and cities in the gap. In all likelihood it will never fill in to any reasonable extent.
California is even more striking:
Here, you've got dense cities, but with basically zero population density in the countryside. From where I'm sitting, it's hard to argue that San Francisco and LA will ever be an interconnected urban region. They will always be separated by hundreds of miles of extremely sparse population.
The Midwest is a strange scenario:
Here there is reasonable density spread mostly all around, and it doesn't seem to follow any sort of linear pattern or anything. There are also some large gaps.
In my opinion, the one that resembles Boswash the most is the Southeast. However, there really needs to be more development in the middle of the chain before it will look pretty continuous--South Carolina needs to pick up the slack, in other words. NE Georgia is the sparsest portion, but is developing quickly (some tracts, even as far as 100mi from Atlanta, grew by 50% over the last census period).
Other regions definitely have more impressive cities themselves, but don't really connect to each other in any meaningful way and have no prospects of doing so. The Midwest, once again, is a strange outlier.
It's funny with the West Coast, you can practically see the various mountain ranges with a density map - especially between Santa Clarita, Lancaster and Bakersfield, north of the LA / IE area and north of Santa Barbara.
It is also striking just how much denser CA cities are than the SE cities. Even small minor cities like Santa Barbara, Oxnard, Santa Maria, San Luis Obispo, etc have little densely populated cores that cities like Columbia, Greenville, Knoxville, even Charlotte don't come close to matching.
Northern CA and Southern CA for that matter really appear to have greater density levels in their respective regions.
Take everything I said about southern California (obvious mountain ranges, dense minor cities) and it applies to Northern California 100%. The biggest gap between the two is from Paso Robles to Soledad / Salinas. Other than that the areas are kind of growing together, just lacking that ultra low-density sprawl that connects the Northeast and (especially) the Midwest. From San Diego up to Ojai is completely connected, then a small gap between Santa Barbara and Ventura (ultra narrow area between coastline and mountains: http://goo.gl/maps/eazBh) And then it is practically connected from Santa Barbara all the way up to Paso Robles, with a couple of small gaps in between Santa Maria, Lompoc and Santa Barbara (again, mountains). One look at the terrain map and you'll see why those gaps exist: http://goo.gl/maps/tX2FP
I'm actually pretty surprised at the density levels between San Jose and Santa Cruz. I was in Saratoga last weekend and those mountains look incredibly steep, surprised they are able to maintain the second lowest density level (500 ppsm).
Last edited by munchitup; 10-17-2012 at 08:41 AM..
The lay of the land all but guarantees higher density in whatever flat areas there may be and any gaps are usually do to undevelopable land barriers.
Ding ding ding!
Of course, this will fly over almost everyone's head.
This is why California, on a state or regional level by definition, can't EVER be as densely populated as the Northeast. Unless we can magically create more flat land, but that would alter the climate so much that California may not be as desirable anymore. You can't have low density sprawl on really jagged mountains. Let's not kid ourselves.
It could be as densely populated if all the flat land that IS available for development has a density of 10000 ppsm and above.
What I don't get is on one hand, some of the posters who WANT this to happen are very much anti-sprawl, but at the same time, want to achieve a relative connected density level which can only happen THROUGH sprawl. So a sign of a mature region is for everything to sprawl into each other. Ok, glad we got that out of the way.
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