Densest cities in the United States (design, housing, residential)

[18Montclair]

Originally Posted by toughguy

I don't see how you can toss aside population density as an irrelevant figure. It's not a subjective figure...you take the city's population and divide by the square mileage.

I tend to agree. Singling out some historic neighborhoods is not really representative of the whole city.

At the same time, some cities have huge areas that are far more dense than the whole city numbers would suggest.

[sweetclimber]

Originally Posted by nyc2va76

As far as visiting the world, You do not have anything on me. I have been to my share of countries around the world. It is what It is. There is people that just like to be in dense areas. Get over it. You have your sprawl be happy with that. Some people are happy with density whether it is highrise, lowrise, rowhouse, tenement buildings, or loft apartments.

Sprawl? Not where I am at. I have everything I need close by as I have already pointed out. Just admit when you are wrong and get over it. As far as visiting the world, I highly doubt that you have more experience than I do. Just because you are from the Northeast does not automatically qualify you as a refined world traveler

[BubbyBu]

you guys sound like sch-mucks....
stop and move on...

[WestbankNOLA]

Originally Posted by toughguy

It's not a subjective figure...you take the city's population and divide by the square mileage.

That is exactly why. With that formula you can have a city that has no density what so ever end up with a higher population density then a city that is actually dense and crowded.

[nyc2va76]

Originally Posted by sweetclimber

Sprawl? Not where I am at. I have everything I need close by as I have already pointed out. Just admit when you are wrong and get over it. As far as visiting the world, I highly doubt that you have more experience than I do. Just because you are from the Northeast does not automatically qualify you as a refined world traveler

So sensitive are we. First of all stop thinking that people from the Northeast have some type of an elitist attitude. We may be a little cocky, but we give respect when it is due. The point I said was that you have people such as myself that do not mind living in densely populated areas with everything within walking distance. I was not trying to bash your city. I am not going to do this back and forth foolishness about who been where you been to places, I been to places. If anything once your city gets a decent rail system, Houston might be in the top 3 in the US.

[ainulinale]

Originally Posted by toughguy

I don't see how you can toss aside population density as an irrelevant figure. It's not a subjective figure...you take the city's population and divide by the square mileage. You can debate the merit of the housing stock, but you can't say a city isn't dense just because it doesn't have northeastern style row house developments.

Well, I've said this before here. IMO, true density of a city is not how many people live there (we could have 2000 ft. tall apartment building in the middle of a corn field and the area will appear dense), it's the physical structure (housing and layout ) of a city that makes it dense.
One reason population density is not important is that Northeastern and Midwestern cities have lost population in their urban core, yet much of the structure still exists and is being restored. Another reason is that flatter cities have an advantage. Average population density misses how a city is urbanized. For instance, Pittsburgh has pockets of extreme urbanization surrounded by unurbanized woods and hills. The core of Pittsburgh and the rest of the Northeast cities looks like this:



You can't tell the extremes with averages, and you'd never know that the fabric of certain Northeastern cities is far more condensed then, say, Los Angeles. Additionally, I never said a city is not dense because it doesn't have row house neighborhoods (in fact, Chicago, Cincinnati, St. Louis, New Orleans, which I mentioned as dense, do not have a significant row house presence). My use of the row house neighborhood provides an example of what constitutes a dense city.

[sweetclimber]

Originally Posted by nyc2va76

So sensitive are we. First of all stop thinking that people from the Northeast have some type of an elitist attitude. We may be a little cocky, but we give respect when it is due. The point I said was that you have people such as myself that do not mind living in densely populated areas with everything within walking distance. I was not trying to bash your city. I am not going to do this back and forth foolishness about who been where you been to places, I been to places. If anything once your city gets a decent rail system, Houston might be in the top 3 in the US.

All right, it's cool dude. I am originally from NY (Rochester 17 yrs and NYC 1 yr). Light rail is one thing I wish we would be faster in setting up down here

[nyc2va76]

Ok now we are getting somewhere. I have been to Texas but it was Dallas and San Antonio. My only beef is it gets too hot for my taste in the Summer.

[nyc2va76]

Originally Posted by sweetclimber

All right, it's cool dude. I am originally from NY (Rochester 17 yrs and NYC 1 yr). Light rail is one thing I wish we would be faster in setting up down here

Finally we have agreed about something.

[Katiana]

Originally Posted by sukwoo

Yeah, you don't think Miami (and Chicago and NYC) has large areas where people don't live too? What about Central Park? What about Grant Park, the Chicago river, the vast areas of factories and warehouses? If you want to cherry pick statistics, you can always find neighborhoods and subsections of the city with higher or lower areas of density. The relevant point is how much of your city's population lives in a dense walkable neighborhood. In Chicago, a significant fraction (probably more than a third) lives on less than one fifth of the land area. There are multiple, contiguous square miles (not just a few blocks here or there) with population densities exceeding 20,000 people/sq mile (see the pictures by Chicago60614.)

NOTE: I'm not making a value judgement whether high density is good or bad. I'm just pointing out the significant difference, even greater than reflected in "average population density" numbers, between pre-auto and post-auto cities.

Yes, I am aware that other cities have their unoccupied areas as well. However, some ciites don't include their airports in their own sqare mileage, the airport is located outside the city limits. In Denver's case, 52 sq. mi. of city land is Denver International Airport, approximately 1/3 of the city's area.

Denver International Airport - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

"The 33,000 acres (52 sq mi; 130 km²)[16] of land occupied by the airport is nearly twice the land area of Manhattan. The land was transferred from Adams County to Denver after a 1989 vote,[17] increasing the city's size by 50 percent.[citation needed] However, much of the city of Aurora is actually closer to the airport than the developed portions of Denver, and all freeway traffic accessing the airport from central Denver passes through Aurora."

There are a number of threads on the Denver forum with pictures of Denver neighborhoods. Here is one:

Condos around Cheesman Park

There are several others in this thread:

http://www.city-data.com/forum/denve...ml#post2644450

Denver has its dense, older neighborhoods, just like cities "back east" (which often includes the midwest in many people's minds). It also has a large suburban population, though not as large as Pittsburgh's. The metros are about the same, but Denver's city population is considerably larger, and growing. The suburbs are tightly packed here; 1/4 acre lots (~10,000 sq. ft) are considered large, and 1/2 acre is rare in any close-in suburb. Our lot is about 8000 sq. ft. and is considered large for this city. Which brings me to another point. In Denver, and most western cities, the suburbs are actually independent cities, not little townships like they are back east. So it is a different mind-set. We also have sidewalks in most areas. Except for sidewalks, which I consider a good thing, I'm not saying one way is better than another, but they are different, and I find the burbs here more "urban", even the newer ones.