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To answer the OP, every city is contextual; no two cities are alike. In general, density is most important in big city feel, but not always (I.e. Los Angeles, Houston). Small city, large metro (Boston) could be on par with Large city, small metro (Phoenix, relatively)...it's all contextual. Even Jacksonville has its moments...
Yep, if you took all the towns and cities that abut Boston and included them as part of Boston, Boston would be massive in terms of population and to a lesser degree, geographic area.
As it is, Brookline, Cambridge, Chelsea, Somerville, Watertown, Quincy etc. are, for all intents and purposes, Boston.
This would be true of Miami as well. At 100 contiguous square miles, Miami would probably be well in excess of a million.
Location: Watching half my country turn into Gilead
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Quote:
Originally Posted by NativeOrange
But Los Angeles IS a very dense city.
You can vent when LA, which is rapidly densifying to its credit, cracks 10k overall and improves its urban form (which it is also doing). But for now, no, it is only very dense in specific areas, and still suffers from an auto-oriented format, much like Miami.
You can vent when LA, which is rapidly densifying to its credit, cracks 10k overall and improves its urban form (which it is also doing). But for now, no, it is only very dense in specific areas, and still suffers from an auto-oriented format, much like Miami.
Well of course (even though LA has multiple hoods in its core in the 20-50k/sq. mile range), but with the vast and variable amounts of undeveloped land in most US cities, average density figures don't really tell much of the story.
Hartford is probably the largest metropolitan area in the country with its center city at under 200,000. Hartford has 125,000 people and its metro is 1,200,000. Hartford is just a 9-5 city with a large insurance presence. It's just a massive office park and once the work day ends then everyone flees to the suburbs. The suburbs have all the action. People shop, eat, and play in the suburbs. That's the way it is here. Only a small amount of people go in downtown unless there's a concert or sporting event.
Dude, Harris+Fort Bend+ Montgomery+Brazoria+Galveston equals Houston met all the other counties are just there for jokes and laughs. All though on 249 and SW Waller have. Adds commuters Waller doesn't have a city over 5,000 people and the county is less Han 100,000 people that is just extra land added on. Although I love Waller County and live only a couple miles from there I know more people who live in Brazoria, Montgomery or Galveston County than in Waller (1 person) and I almost drive into Waller county every Sunday on the way to church???? I only drive through Liberty and Chambers and the CSA for Houston is even more small and basically irrelevant places that just add like 4,000 miles with only 100,000 people. In fact at my church I know more people from Schulenburg and Eagle Lake Texas than I do who live in Waller County. In fact ABrazoria County is only there because of Pearland and Montgomery is basically the Woodlands a few surrounding towns and Conroe. Galveston and Fort Bend are about 30-40% developed each and even Harris is at most 60-70% developed and that is a a stretch. Dallas has about 4 counties and her are mostly developed with Dalals county being 80-90% or so developed and Collin and Denton being about to 40-50% developed while Tarrant is about 70-80% developed and has a population of 6 million people in the core 4 and really tight boundaries Houston on the other hand is not Like Dallas or the NE.
Sorry for the rant but it just makes me irritated when people try to talk about how big our metro is when in reality 75% of our population live in one county and all the other county aren't even 50% developed.
Cool, thanks. How does this hold up for smaller cities and metros in the 50,000 to 250,000 size? Is it noticeable?
According to the estimates Tallahassee fl pop is 250 plus. Charleston sc pop its 129k. Charleston feels so much bigger than Tallahassee even though Tallahassee has over 100k more people but charleston metro its 700kplus and tallay is 300k plus. Very noticeable
According to the estimates Tallahassee fl pop is 250 plus. Charleston sc pop its 129k. Charleston feels so much bigger than Tallahassee even though Tallahassee has over 100k more people but charleston metro its 700kplus and tallay is 300k plus. Very noticeable
Oddly for that comparison Tallahassee actually has LESS land area than Charleston. I compared the two on the census quick facts website next to my homer city of Grand Rapids.
Tallahassee
City pop (2015): 189,907
Land area: 100.25sq mi
Density: 1,809ppsm
Metro: 377,924
Charleston
City pop (2015): 132,609
Land area:109sq mi
Density:1,102ppsm
Metro: 744,526
Grand Rapids
City pop (2015):195,097
Land area: 44.5sq mi
Density: 4,235ppsm
Metro: 1,038,583
I looked at a map for the city of Charleston and it has some of the most disjointed city boundaries i've ever seen. I know it's a fairly large port. Just at quick glance it looked there were quite a bit of areas without a lot of grids or development. If I had to guess i'd assume the city covers an area like that in order to capture revenues from industrial areas and the ports. It would be interesting to see how dense it is at it's core.
Tallahassee also has a fairly unique shape, it appears to cover several undeveloped and undevelopable (parks/preserves ect) areas. Over half of the land area in Salt Lake City is empty, If you were to only look at the developed portion of SLC it's density would double. I would imagine Tallahassee is similar.
Grand Rapids expanded until Michigan law made it impossible and then in the 50's all of the areas around it incorporated in order to stop what little chance it did have from expanding. If you were to merge Grand Rapids with only it's two largest suburbs you would have a city of over 320k in 91sq mi. It would still have less land area than both.
Alot of land in charleston sc is unable to build on. Alot of is marsh and water. Not saying you cant build on it but takes alot of money,time and sand
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