Is San Francisco the only actual 'city' in the entire state of California? (transportation, Boston)
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Umm...yes. But I can't speak for all the urbanist posters; we're not all the same you know.
I prefer ungridded cities myself. I think you can have more variation in the streetscape. Cities like Boston or London or more fun to walk around and feel kinda maze-like. Also much easier to get lost and a horror to navigate by car. But sure, gridded cities can work well, too.
That's why I thought your definition was too broad.
Grids are the holy grail of urban planning, doncha know?
SF is on a grid, too. So I guess it doesn't resemble a NE city.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ohiogirl81
Well, I've never been to Minneapolis ...
LOL, I've never been to Cincy, except to the airport, and that's in KY!
There seems to be a lot of discussion regarding different styles of Cities in North America, and I kind of want to present some thoughts regarding this, here are some ideas:
European Colonial Style Cities: French Quarter New Orleans, Quebec City, Old Town Montreal, Beacon Hill Boston, Society Hill Philadelphia, St. Augustine Florida. - Very dense with a strong european flavor, large apartment buildings and very narrow streets. (I can't vouch for Mexico as I haven't been there), generally these are certain neighborhoods. The North End in Boston counts for the streets, but the Architecture is way more East Coast style as almost all colonial buildings were torn down over the years and replaced by mid-late 1800s buildings. Generally renaissance era cities/neighborhoods.
Skyscraper lands: The loop and Near North/Near South neighborhoods of Chicago and Lower Manhattan, except a handful of old neighborhoods like the lower east side. Tall skyscrapers forming canyons where roadways occur, this is increadibly rare in north america. Vancouver fits to a lesser extent in its downtown area.
Eastern Style Cities - Row Houses, detached italianate/federal townhouses, large brick tenement buildings, narrow (but not as narrow as European) streets. Generally developed pre-railroad. Most of Boston, much of New York City, Baltimore, Philadelphia (except the oldest hoods), Cincinnati. This is what I'm most familiar with as a "city" as Cincinnati fits in this style and I always felt Cincinnati was a "real" city versus Dayton which fits firmly into Midwestern. Take a look at old pics of Cincy and you'll find its the last of the East Coast cities, anything to the west feels generally less urban in a traditional sense.
Eastren Influenced Midwestren: Chicago, St. Louis, Pittsburgh, Louisville. These are cities that have row houses and some large tenement buildings, but also have a ton of frame midwestren style houses and large 20th century brick apartment buildings. Taking the loop out of Chicago which is essentially Manhattan lite, its architectural ventricular is a pseudo east coast core (probably larger before urban renewal and manhattanization of its lakefront) while the neighborhoods outside of Lincoln Park, Wicker Park, Tri Taylor, Little Italy, Pilsen, and Bucktown are purely midwestren though sometimes way denser than normal. Pittsburgh I'm throwing in this because its essentially a smaller Cincinnati early on but developed into something larger later, ditto with St. Louis.
Midwestren: Dayton Ohio, Columbus (though somewhat eastren influenced in spots), Indianapolis, Cleveland, Detroit, Des Moines, etc. Lots of frame single family houses, larger cities also have large 20th century courtyard apartments.
Denver - Its own beast, feels like a hodgepodge of styles all around the country, a touch of Chicago and Seattle.
San Francisco - its its own beast. It feels a lot like Chicago (its about the same age) but denser and more pastel it feels older too than Chicago. There even are similarities to neighborhoods in Brooklyn and in Cincinnati (see Columbia Tusculum) though way more frame houses, but because the frame is sequoia it feels more substantial than most midwetren cities. Roads are a bit narrower than midwestren due to topography but way wider than most east coast cities.
San Fran influenced Midwestren - Its the only way I can describe Portland's OR vernacular, with large pastel apartment buildings downtown, which resemble San Fran, surrounded by a very midwestren mix of frame houses, Portland to me feels like 19th century industrial suburbs of Cincinnati like reading or lockland, not too far from Dayton or Indianapolis, though I think long term Portland is going to look a lot more like Vancouver as it develops a post modern dense city flavor. Though there is also a super mod Seattle influence, its kind of a weird mix.
Seattle - again its own beast, its like the very last walkable city before cities developed as very sprawlly a lot of it is very modernist mixed with bungalows, it feels different than a midwestren city, can't put my finger on it but it just does, whereas Portland had way more of a midwestren feel, possibly because Portland is way older but never got as big as San Fran.
Vancouver - like Seattle, but with a strong influence of Hong Kong, though smaller.
Super Sprawl- LA, Houston and Atlanta - all three have urban cores, but generally are miles of vast freeways/expressways and sprawl, though LAs is denser sprawl.
Sprawlville - any number of Southern or planes state cities, most of North Carolina, most of Texas etc. No real vernacular, no real distinguished downtowns.
Just some thoughts, not sure if anyone wants to add more.
You people are sickening with this "real city" nonsesne. An incorporated municipality is a city.
A municipality is an incorporated community. An incorporated community is a community that is self-governing and has the powers of eminent domain.
And the census definition for what is a city is a bunch of nonsense.
Human geography terms are more accurate.
What one defines as cities and towns depends on the person, and here is my list of the main types of communities:
Cities (communities with 200,000 population, a central downtown, and are the seat of an urban area)
Towns (communities under 200,000 population)
Suburbs (communities mostly suburban and within a half hour of a city)
Ex-urbs (communities mostly suburban within 30 minutes or more of a city)
Boomburbs or egde city (communities of 100,000 population, mostly suburban, and on the egde of a metropolitan area. Usually no downtown.)
Community (community under a county government)
I'm sorry, but there are cities in California of 300 people and are not cities or what I think of a city.
Los Angeles, San Jose, San Diego, Sacramento, Long Beach, Santa Ana, Bakersfield, Fresno, Oakland, and Long Beach all developed in the 19th century and mostly in the 60s when cities were developing vertically. And downtown LA was developed before the 19th century and is a larger downtown than San Francisco and the core of downtown LA is not as nice as downtown San Francisco, but it is more dense than downtown LA. LA even has it's own subway.
Also Seattle, Portland, and San Francisco are constrained by land. Other western USA cities have land to build out. And certain factors lead to cities building the suburban areas.
I really wish the USA had a system like Canada or Great Britain which defines cities. In Canada and China, 100,000 population denotes a city. Heck, even some states define what a city is. But most states in California set the bar to be a city pretty low.
Maybe getting rid of the town and city system would be best.
Funny though, many urbanists on this forum think a grid system is the best for cities, and yet you don't see that in many NE cities. I should add that DH's experience with NE cities is mainly through Pittsburgh, and Albany NY. Two points of interest: My hometown in Pennsylvania west of Pittsburgh IS built on a grid, and Washington, DC, designed by a French architect, is well known as a low-density city b/c it doesn't have a lot of tall buildings. What say you, urbanists? Is it remotely possible there can be more than one "type" of city?
DC is like the 6th or so densest large city in the US at nearly 10K ppsm (the only cities that are more dense are NYC, Boston, Philly, Chicago, and SF)
NYC is mostly on a grid as is Philadelphia, DC and Baltimore for the most part, not sure your point on that
Also most of the cities you mentioned have some fairly dramatic differences in density and development type relative to the NE cities, Pittsburgh may be the closest albeit a fraction the size of the larger NE cities.
Los Angeles, San Diego, Sacramento, San Jose, these are all suburban sprawl metropolises. In the biggest, most populous state in the country only San Francisco seems to come close to the definition of a 'city' in the traditional sense. Pretty sad. The whole state is like one giant suburban strip mall.
Come to think of it, I can think of only three 'cities' in the entire western half of the United States that come close to being considered more or less genuine, traditional urban places: Portland, Seattle and San Francisco (and the last two kind of fall short IMO). Are there any others?
LA is a very dense city, it is actually denser in its core 50 sq miles than any city in the US with the exception of NYC, Philly is third followed by Chicago and SF and Boston (pretty good urban company if you ask me).
For as much as LA gets a bad wrap it is extremely dense, especially in its core. it puts Seattle and Portland to shame in this perspective by a large margin actually. LA nearly maintain a 10K ppsm density over 300 sq miles - agon more than any other city can demonstrate in the US with the exception of NYC - SF can extend its boundaries and slectively maintain this desnity only to 135 sq miles (the size of Philly proper and Boston can only maintain to 125 sq miles). Philly can only do this to 200 sq miles. Chicago can maintian this to ~280 sq miles. LA by many measures is quite the city actually
These seems like C vs C type thread made to make some point about LA if you ask me
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
(J/K)
