Worst big city in america (500,000 plus city) (crime rate, homes)

[Awesomo.2000]

Originally Posted by Drover

Relax? No skin off my nose whether Pittsburgh comes or goes, really. We simply disagree about Pittsburgh's state of affairs. I have nothing to "relax" about, and I'm not the one who's in reactionary "stop picking on my city! boo hoo!" mode.

No reason to respond so rude. I just gave my insight on why Pittsburgh's future isn't as bad as I think it is.

[missionhome]

Originally Posted by Steve-o

oversprawled

While the city of Los Angeles itself is not nearly as dense as central Chicago, Chicago does consume much more land it its greater metropolitan area. Considering on this forum we take metro population into account, we should also consider metro density. A city could have a very dense core, but if 85% of the area population lives in very sprawling suburbs, the area definitely has a sprawl problem. Once you get out of the main part of the city, Chicago sprawls way worse than LA which is pretty much continuously fairly dense in the entire metro.

Density for Metro:
Chicago: 3,913
Los Angeles: 7,068 (densest metro in USA)

So in the Chicago area, about 5.5 million people are living in very very sprawling suburbs that have rolled out over Illinois compared to Southern California which has actually been more responsible with its consumption of land.

LA beats out a lot of other cities not known for sprawl like Seattle, Cleveland, Detroit, Minneapolis, and St. Louis for example.

[LASam]

How many threads do we need that focus on people just b*tching about this city or that city? I mean... it's just so redundant.

[Drover]

Originally Posted by missionhome

While the city of Los Angeles itself is not nearly as dense as central Chicago, Chicago does consume much more land it its greater metropolitan area. Considering on this forum we take metro population into account, we should also consider metro density. A city could have a very dense core, but if 85% of the area population lives in very sprawling suburbs, the area definitely has a sprawl problem. Once you get out of the main part of the city, Chicago sprawls way worse than LA which is pretty much continuously fairly dense in the entire metro.

Density for Metro:
Chicago: 3,913
Los Angeles: 7,068 (densest metro in USA)

So in the Chicago area, about 5.5 million people are living in very very sprawling suburbs that have rolled out over Illinois compared to Southern California which has actually been more responsible with its consumption of land.

Uh, try again. According to the Census Bureau, the LA MSA is 2,665 people per square mile. Also, the Chicago metropolitan area is nearly 10 million, not 5.5 million. There are that many people in Cook County alone. Finally, the Chicago MSA incorporates a lot of area that is still basically open farmland. If that's irresponsible consumption of land, I'd be interested to know how you propose we feed ourselves.

[missionhome]

Originally Posted by Drover

Uh, try again. According to the Census Bureau, the LA MSA is 2,665 people per square mile. Also, the Chicago metropolitan area is nearly 10 million, not 5.5 million. There are that many people in Cook County alone. Finally, the Chicago MSA incorporates a lot of area that is still basically open farmland. If that's irresponsible consumption of land, I'd be interested to know how you propose we feed ourselves.

Here is the link to the Census Bureau website. It only includes areas which have a population density greater than 500 so that all your farmland is thrown out. This is considered the "urban area" of the metro and does not include the far out rural areas that were tacked onto both city's metro.


http://www.census.gov/geo/www/ua/ua2k.txt

[sav858]

Originally Posted by Drover

Uh, try again. According to the Census Bureau, the LA MSA is 2,665 people per square mile. Also, the Chicago metropolitan area is nearly 10 million, not 5.5 million. There are that many people in Cook County alone. Finally, the Chicago MSA incorporates a lot of area that is still basically open farmland. If that's irresponsible consumption of land, I'd be interested to know how you propose we feed ourselves.

And according to the census bureau Chicago MSA is 1,634 people per sq mile, so whatever source you decide to use Chicago is still less dense. And the population is closer to 9 million not 10 according to the census bureau.

Also the densities on the Census website are very low, most are in the hundred of people per sq mile range. They seem to include a lot of open, undeveloped land or something.

I think these stats better reflect metropolitan density, which shows LA at around 7k per sq mile: USA Urbanized Areas: 2000 Ranked by Population(465 Areas)

[Drover]

Originally Posted by missionhome

Here is the link to the Census Bureau website. It only includes areas which have a population density greater than 500 so that all your farmland is thrown out. This is considered the "urban area" of the metro and does not include the far out rural areas that were tacked onto both city's metro.


http://www.census.gov/geo/www/ua/ua2k.txt

I'd be interested in how they define "urban area" if they claim Chicago's "urban area" is 5.5 million people. Like I said, there are that many people in Cook County alone, which has a population density of 5,600 per square mile (as opposed to L.A. county's "responsible" land use of 2,447 people per square mile).

[missionhome]

Originally Posted by Drover

I'd be interested in how they define "urban area" if they claim Chicago's "urban area" is 5.5 million people. Like I said, there are that many people in Cook County alone, which has a population density of 5,600 per square mile (as opposed to L.A. county's "responsible" land use of 2,447 people per square mile).

Sorry about the mistake on my behalf. The Census Bureau says that the urban area population is 8,307,904 so about 1.5 million people in the metro must live in areas where the density is too low to be a part of the urban area.

Los Angeles County has a low density due to the very high amount of rural or uninhabitable areas. The county stretches far more than the urban area. The white area in the map is all undeveloped or mountains (the ones you see in photos) that almost nobody lives in. As you can see, about half the county is empty. This is why the urban area statistics can be more relevant, because it doesn't include rural areas.

[cpking5]

As much as I love Milwaukee, I am going to have to say Brew City, because of the crime and cold.

[BelieveInCleve]

Detroit, all hands down.

There are 34 cities in the USA over 500k.

If you think Indianapolis is the worst city over 500k, than Im assuming you havent been to too many others.