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Comparing the dense core of a bigger city with the entire urban area of a smaller one usually favors the former density-wise.
Only when the core is more dense. There aren't a lot of cities in the world that are larger than Paris but that argument surely doesn't work for LA, Sao Paulo, Mexico City, etc.
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A dense core comparable to NYC + Nassau county for Paris would be, for example, Paris + all the adjacent departments (92, 93 & 94). That's 6.7 million people over 295 square miles, a density of roughly 23,000 ppsm. 64% of the population of Paris urban area lives in this dense core, as opposed to 56% of NY's in NYC + Nassau. Moreover, it's denser (23k ppsm vs 16.5k in NY's case).
I respectfully disagree for a few reasons. The dense core of NYC is Manhattan . . . which annexed its "suburban" counties relatively recently. The boundaries of Paris have been fixed since before New Amsterdam. So the adjacent departments are not Nassau and Westchester but Staten Island, Queens, Hudson, etc.
As I said earlier, if the Paris metro was the size of the NYC metro and it had an extra million people living in the lower density suburbs that I linked to (which would cover a vast land area) it would drag the metro density down quite a bit. With the loss of population and jobs in Paris proper and the rapid growth of the suburbs (plus the social problems in some of them) and the rise of car commuting in the suburbs there's every reason to believe that this is exactly what's happening there.
But there is a relationship between density, transit use and car dependency. Pointing out Los Angeles as an exception to the rule only serves to validate the existence of the rule.
Even if we assume for a second that there is a correlation - it's certainly not causation.
Los Angeles vs. New York is but one example of the problem with assuming that there's a correlation.
This list is full of cities with similar car usage (again, this is just JTW) but wildly divergent population densities. The extent to which people own cars and use them to get to work has as much to do with the wealth of that city, where most of its jobs are, the geographical size of the city, and the ease and relative expense of driving and parking + any restrictions on driving into the CBD as it is to do with anything else.
Even if we assume for a second that there is a correlation - it's certainly not causation.
But nobody said that. I'm saying that there is a very strong relationship between density and transit, and in Europe's case, its greater densities are certainly a reason why it has greater transit share than the United States. I mean, are you willing to say that population density has very little to do with Europe's higher transit shares?
The 2010 numbers are higher but calculated over the same area as in 2008. The physical extension of urban areas is calculated about once a decade by the INSEE. Last one was 2008 (nei's numbers). Before that, 1999.
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Only when the core is more dense. There aren't a lot of cities in the world that are larger than Paris but that argument surely doesn't work for LA, Sao Paulo, Mexico City, etc.
What I wanted to say is that comparing a whole urban area to the densest parts of another one isn't logical to me. That's like me comparing Paris + the adjacent departments with the whole Madrid urban area. Madrid is denser and has far fewer houses than Paris, but its urban area (around 6 million) is less dense than Paris' 6-million equivalent.
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I respectfully disagree for a few reasons. The dense core of NYC is Manhattan . . . which annexed its "suburban" counties relatively recently. The boundaries of Paris have been fixed since before New Amsterdam. So the adjacent departments are not Nassau and Westchester but Staten Island, Queens, Hudson, etc.
As I said earlier, if the Paris metro was the size of the NYC metro and it had an extra million people living in the lower density suburbs that I linked to (which would cover a vast land area) it would drag the metro density down quite a bit.
But it isn't the case. Where New York has leafy, sprawling suburbs, Paris has fields. One can't discount the huge, very low density suburbs of LI, CT and NJ just because New York is a bigger city than Paris.
That was a density of 74,608 ppsm in 1920. That's more than the number of people within the city of Philadelphia in 1920 (1,823,779/13,610 ppsm). You're really talking about a density that's more on par with Manhattan than Philadelphia.
It's the same thing with London. If you grind it down to its leanest and meanest 40 sq. miles or so, it would be a blow out. Even taking that 3.5 million stat for London, that's basically Chicago's peak population stuffed into Philadelphia. That is a HUGE difference.
And these are just the objective standards. There are also the subjective ones relating to these cities' walkability and built environment. In this regard, Barcelona and Paris are dense and mixed-use in a way that Manhattan is not.
Philly's inner 25 square miles (Center City, North and South Philly) in 1940 were around 40,000 ppsm, and it was probably denser in 1920 since most cities experienced decreases in household size/crowding during that period. I wouldn't be surprised if it was around 50,000 ppsm in 1920.
Philadelphia had 1.8 million people in 1920, Berlin 4 million, New York 5.6 million and London 7.6 million. My main point was that when you account for age and size, American cities don't have such a different pattern from European ones. Manhattan was around 100,000 ppsm in 1920, so Berlin fit right where you would expect on the trend between Philly and NYC.
London was actually less dense than you'd expect for a city its size. The densest borough was I think around 70,000 ppsm in 1920, most were more around 50,000 ppsm in 1920 so it seems it was similar to Philly despite being 4 times bigger. The population trend of these boroughs shows they were losing population already prior to WWII. In 1941, Camden+Islington+Tower Hamlets+Hackney+the City had 1.267 million people in 30.25 square miles, not a significant difference compared to Philadelphia. The densest borough today is I believe Islington at 36,000 ppsm.
Friedenau in Berlin is around 41,000 ppsm but that's a pretty small district. The densest districts of Berlin are around 30-40,000 ppsm.
But there is a relationship between density, transit use and car dependency.
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I'm saying that there is a very strong relationship between density and transit, and in Europe's case, its greater densities are certainly a reason why it has greater transit share than the United States. I mean, are you willing to say that population density has very little to do with Europe's higher transit shares?
No, I wouldn't say that. I said it's a factor but it's not the factor and then i gave a list of factors that would be just as important if not more important.
You just can't say that "x city is dense so it's going to have a lot of transit riders". It's not that simple. Paris doesn't have a high transit mode share because it's dense enough and has enough employment that nearly everyone who lives in the city can not only have a job in the city but also the high probability of being able to walk to that job.
New York doesn't work that way because it's much larger geographically and because Manhattan has an outsized proportion of the jobs. No one is walking from their house in Flatbush to their job in Midtown.
San Francisco and Boston have nearly identical modal splits despite the former being 25% more dense than the latter. Boston has a slightly higher percentage of people walking to work and I would assume that it gets the advantage there because compared to SF it's a pancake.
Having a city that is 20,000 ppm vs. a city that is 30,000 ppm just isn't enough to produce an important difference in mode share. Being able to effectively service neighborhoods with transit starts at around 3-4000 ppm (Portland). Of course, there are a lot of other factors at play and it's going to cost you a lot more money per capita to do it compared to a city with a Boston-like density but it's feasible if the jobs and goods/services are in the right places.
Amsterdam isn't especially dense and look at their modal splits. Same car use % as NYC. Burlington, VT is ~40% non-car and has less than 3,800 ppm.
Philly's inner 25 square miles (Center City, North and South Philly) in 1940 were around 40,000 ppsm, and it was probably denser in 1920 since most cities experienced decreases in household size/crowding during that period. I wouldn't be surprised if it was around 50,000 ppsm in 1920.
Philadelphia had 1.8 million people in 1920, Berlin 4 million, New York 5.6 million and London 7.6 million. My main point was that when you account for age and size, American cities don't have such a different pattern from European ones. Manhattan was around 100,000 ppsm in 1920, so Berlin fit right where you would expect on the trend between Philly and NYC.
Excellent point. Anywhere in Philly where you can find the "air-lite" rowhomes - which was most of the northeast, southwest, large parts of west philly, half of Roxborough/Andorra, East Oak Lane, etc - was still farms or wetlands in the 1920s.
With the exception of a brief digression into corruption most of this thread has been about density and yet the title is "9 reasons why the USA ended up so much more car dependent than Europe" so one could reasonably assume that people are trying to draw a parallel between density and transit use or car dependency.
IMO, that's a really lazy argument that doesn't stand up well to scrutiny.
Really????
Really????
The UNITED STATES is nowhere as dense as EUROPE. That is what the article is comparing. The United States and Europe.
So you try to shift the discussion to NYC as representing the UNITED STATES.
And then argue that since there are some cities in the country of the UNITED STATES that are dense, that the country of the UNITED STATES should pursue the same policies as the countries of EUROPE.
Once again, Public Transit becomes a national issue when national density reaches a certain point. Until that point is reached, public transit is a local issue or a regional issue. European countries are more densely populated than the United States, and their urban populations represent enough of the countries' total populations to make transit a national issue. The United States has not reached that point, and is unlikely to do so in the immediate future.
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