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It is one of the reasons Houston has a lower density than Arlington, a Dallas suburb. Their are often random large spaces of undeveloped land or between a terrible neighborhood and a decent middle class area their is very little.
*Fort Worth suburb... regardless of the fact that the Cowboys play there.
As for this thread, we all already know which cities will be pegged as "suburban".
To be fair, the Chicago Loop and the Financial District in Lower Manhattan are pretty dead in the evenings. The active area most people think of "Downtown" Chicago is really River North. Midtown Manhattan is a lot more active though. Even Downtown DC is pretty dead in the evening, but there's a lot of activity in the monuments area and the neighborhoods immediately to the north like Dupont and Logan Circles.
River North is included in the Downtown Area, it's just not the Loop. Downtown Chicago has also made some pretty big strides in the last decade or so in regards to vibrancy after 5 p.m. It still has a ways to go, but it is undoubtedly getting better.
It is one of the reasons Houston has a lower density than Arlington, a Dallas suburb. Their are often random large spaces of undeveloped land or between a terrible neighborhood and a decent middle class area their is very little.
Arlingtons weighted density is no where near as dense as Houston.
It basically is uniformly more dense but does not have the spikes that Houston does. Just like the people who make the vision that Mesa is more dense than Atlanta.
Arlington is also more dense than Dallas and far more dense than Fort Worth. So what? Both cities have more areas of non residential land than Arlington, which like Mesa is packed with residential.
Fort Worth - 2,181.0/sq mi (812,238 people)
Dallas - 3,645/sq mi (1,300,092 people)
Houston - 3,662/sq mi (2,239,558 people)
To me that is why Houston in its city limits feel larger than Dallas. It had only a slightly larger density but it carries it for twice as far. To capture the number of people in Houston you would pretty much have to encapsulate all of Dallas county, but then again the density of that county is 1000 ppsm less than Houston.
All of this is meaningless.
Arlington is about the size of inner loop Houston.
Peer down Houston to just the inner loop and It yields more people than Arlington in the same 96 sq miles even though just about all of its eastern half is industrial.
Arlington simply doesn't have the industry in its limits that the inner loop has. Not a fair comparison at all.
All of this is meaningless.
Arlington is about the size of inner loop Houston.
Peer down Houston to just the inner loop and It yields more people than Arlington in the same 96 sq miles even though just about all of its eastern half is industrial.
Arlington simply doesn't have the industry in its limits that the inner loop has. Not a fair comparison at all.
If so, that puts the density of the inner loop at 5,104 ppsm. Arlington, like you said, has a population density of 3,810 sq. miles. Very good comparison looking at both being about the same size and this was as of 2014. I'm sure it is now over 500,000 people if not a bit closer. I've said it plenty of times, I wish Houston was nothing more than just the Inner Loop as that is the only part of the city that gives a city-like or urban atmosphere in the entire region and has the potential to become even greater. The majority of the rest of the city outside loop, forget about it.
I don't get why people complain about downtown districts being "dead" outside of work hours on the week day. Typically most Central Business Districts house government workers, some corporate headquarters and places where they can stop in for lunch or maybe a work reception.
Because a number of people who respond to these threads are urban-philes. They are looking for urbanity...for the urbane
It is a disappointment when "downtown" is just a glorified office park.
Last edited by Tim Randal Walker; 06-13-2016 at 07:47 PM..
The organizations that advocate for those office-park-like downtowns are generally obsessing about making them more mixed-use. And generally they're succeeding, whether slowly or quickly.
One response is that from a business sense, it's really helpful if it's mixed-use, because a lot of people want to work in mixed-use downtowns.
The best downtowns (or "greater downtowns" more broadly) are good at a bunch of things at once -- they're the top local centers for offices, tourism, business travel, shopping, high-density residential, entertainment, and so on. These typically include areas that are predominantly offices with only ancillary hotels and retail, plus areas where retail dominates or housing dominantes.
Synergy is a huge factor. That can be synergy within an industry, access to services, access to transit (always a big factor), and the ability to live/work/play in the same district.
For example in my region, the construction companies (including mine), architects, and developers are mostly in greater Downtown, because we work closely together. Most of us also put a lot of value on being close to transit.
A lot of other companies are moving closer-in to take advantage of these synergies and what workers want, particuarly young workers. For example Amazon is building a constant flow of buildings in Downtown Seattle, and they say 20% of their workers (often young and well-paid) walk to work. Other companies like Weyerhaeuser, Google, and Expedia are moving closer in in Seattle and also talking about this being useful for attracting workers.
This isn't ideal in every sense of course. Land is rarely cheap when multiple sectors compete for it, and our land prices are going off the charts. Residents and bar districts don't mix well. Night use of loading docks (hard to get around), hotel taxi whistles (easy to get around), and other factors don't always mix.
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