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Old 04-17-2017, 09:54 AM
 
Location: Seattle WA, USA
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Quote:
Originally Posted by nei View Post
yep. Thanks. Thinking in particular "how long do I have to bike to be in rural-ish / undeveloped land" from somewhere close to the city center-ish. I'm not sure how Seattle goes by this measure. I think worse, if only because it has a more regular geography than San Francisco.

=========================================

Added up the component urban areas of the Bay Area to compare land usage

Bay Area: 6.15 million people in 1192 square miles
Denver: 2.49 million people in 701 square miles
Boston: 4.19 million people in 1,874 square miles
Seattle: 3.01 million people in 1,010 square miles
Well SF is better than Seattle in that regard I think, but there are many large parks that are essentially preserved forest land, such as Discovery Park, and Seward Park. However the nearest wild land would be Cougar mountain (western most of the Issaquah alps) and that is 14 mi from Downtown, so about 15-20 mins. And the Snoqualmie Pass (ski resort) is 52 mi away from downtown and takes about 55 mins.

Last edited by nei; 04-17-2017 at 05:24 PM..
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Old 04-17-2017, 11:03 AM
 
Location: Foot of the Rockies
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Quote:
Originally Posted by nei View Post
I was saying feels to me...

A comparison with a place 1/50th the population is kinda unfair. Even a metro with all sprawly development would end shortly. For a large city, non-developed land is really close to San Francisco
Why unfair? I just don't get that you can't see that a huge metro has sprawl basically by definition. Cheyenne hardly even has suburbs.
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Old 04-17-2017, 11:58 AM
nei nei won $500 in our forum's Most Engaging Poster Contest - Thirteenth Edition (Jan-Feb 2015). 

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Location: Western Massachusetts
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I thought sprawl refers to how compact a place's development is? So basically just density. I don't get why you never referred to density.

Even if just going by area, it'd be a more interesting to compare metros of somewhat similar size. Cheyenne going by urban area isn't particularly dense for its size. Ithaca is slightly denser; Pittsfield, MA only a bit lower. But Cheyenne is almost uninhabited outside the urban area, a common western pattern while the other two have "rural sprawl".

Going through only large metros, the Bay Area is the least sprawly. Quick, dramatic contrast to undeveloped land.
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Old 04-17-2017, 12:02 PM
nei nei won $500 in our forum's Most Engaging Poster Contest - Thirteenth Edition (Jan-Feb 2015). 

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Location: Western Massachusetts
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Quote:
Originally Posted by grega94 View Post
Well SF is better than Seattle in that regard I think, but there are many large parks that are essentially preserved forest land, such as Discovery Park, and Seward Park. However the nearest wild land would be Cougar mountain (western most of the Issaquah alps) and that is 14 mi from Downtown, so about 15-20 mins. And the Snoqualmie Pass (ski resort) is 52 mi away from downtown and takes about 55 mins.
Looks like east of Issaquah you get into the Cascades but before it's just big parks
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Old 04-17-2017, 12:16 PM
 
Location: Oakland, CA
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Katarina Witt View Post
The ratio shows the number of people living in the city compared to those living in the burbs. A city with 10X as many people living in the burbs, is "sprawly" indeed. SF has an MSA of 4,679,166. That's still about 5X as many people in the burbs than in the city. Denver's is about 1:4. And people call Denver "sprawly".

I simply do not understand any thinking that SF is not sprawly. It probably has people commuting from way longer distances than Denver does.
What does "sprawly" mean? While the Bay Area region is large, it is a lot denser than most parts of the US. Even in the "sprawl." Until you really get about 45 miles out. The region has contiguous development for 30+ miles in nearly every direction from SF. Also, SF isn't the "center" of the region. Most people do not work in SF or commute to SF, and SF isn't the center of gravity for the area - like Manhattan is for NYC.
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Old 04-17-2017, 12:21 PM
nei nei won $500 in our forum's Most Engaging Poster Contest - Thirteenth Edition (Jan-Feb 2015). 

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Location: Western Massachusetts
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I was saying the opposite; looking at a map , majority of directions from San Francisco 30 miles out is undeveloped. 1/2 to 2/3rds of both Marin and San Mateo Counties are undeveloped; east mostly but then the stretch by walnut creek/concord/Livermore but the undeveloped area is larger. West is ocean...
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Old 04-17-2017, 12:37 PM
 
Location: Oakland, CA
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Katarina Witt View Post
Taking these both together. I can't be on here long; I have to finish cleaning up my house for a big dinner tomorrow w/the extended fam, including a guy who is allergic to cats! Gotta vacuum up all the cat hair.

SF was/is the big Kahuna. I don't remember the technical term, but let's say "alpha city". That's where people went "the summer of love", not to Oakland or Berkley or Mountain View or wherever. Now some did say they wanted to go to Berkley to college, but that's about it. People have been migrating to CA for forever, too. We just discussed this on the Denver forum recently: http://www.city-data.com/forum/denve...y-natives.html It was a long time before people even said "SF-O". (San Francisco-Oakland) In the 70s, I knew a lot of people who went out to SF. That's where they said they were going, not these other places. Now for the most part, they landed in suburbs, e.g. Concord, Walnut Creek, etc. I get it, each of these burbs has its own personality, just like every city I have ever lived in. (Well, that's just two big ones, three if you count Wilmington, Delaware which is basically a suburb of Philadelphia itself.) But yeah, it's no different than Pittsburgh or Denver in that regard.

But for G*d's sake, it's the 11th largest MSA, 5th largest CSA (Wikipedia). There are just a lot of people there, whether it's dense or not. Denver, by contrast, is #19 MSA and #16 CSA.

The city where I lived which had little sprawl is Champaign-Urbana, IL. Cheyenne, Wyo also has little sprawl.
Actually - not really. SF, Oakland and Berkeley all incorporated at about the same time. Oakland was the main HQ / distribution for the agriculture and the terminus for intercontinental railroad. There was a mini boom after the 1906 earthquake where some people moved to Oakland after SF was destroyed in the quake.

Oakland was a distinct economic area with limited ties to SF / SF development patterns as it started out. Over time it became linked more to SF - after WW2. But before that there was no kahuna. SF incorporated as a city in 1850, Oakland in 1852. Berkeley grew up with the university and incorporated in 1878.
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Old 04-17-2017, 12:39 PM
 
Location: Foot of the Rockies
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You two (jade408 and nei) are being disingenuous. We've spent a lot of bandwidth on this forum talking about suburbs and how (insert derogatory term here) they are. I know, nei, you like to treat each thread as is its own separate little idea and think we should never consider what was said on any other thread, ever, but there certainly is a sense on this forum, at least among long time posters, about what "sprawl" is. I've tried to be devil's advocate many times, but we can't even get people to agree on what "suburb" means. Someone did post a definition of sprawl here when I asked, but considering s/he said "low-density, monofunctional and usually car-dependent communities".

No place is monofunctional. Even the tiny suburb I grew up in, with 800 people, the only municipality in Beaver County, PA to not have a church, has a fire department with building, and numerous home businesses. When I was a kid it also had a couple of convenience stores. What's "low density"? Where's the cut-off? A lot of SF suburbs that I've seen are predominantly single family housing. For you guys to argue that a city in this huge metro area is the one in the country that isn't surrounded by sprawl is, quite frankly, ridiculous in the true sense of the meaning of ridiculous, that is, worthy of ridicule.

This statement: "(m)ost people do not work in SF or commute to SF, and SF isn't the center of gravity for the area - like Manhattan is for NYC" acutally supports the sprawl concept. Plus I can tell you, outside of California, SF is considered the "center of gravity". I tried to explain that a couple days ago, got nowhere.
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Old 04-17-2017, 12:42 PM
 
Location: Oakland, CA
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Quote:
Originally Posted by nei View Post
I was saying the opposite; looking at a map , majority of directions from San Francisco 30 miles out is undeveloped. 1/2 to 2/3rds of both Marin and San Mateo Counties are undeveloped; east mostly but then the stretch by walnut creek/concord/Livermore but the undeveloped area is larger. West is ocean...
I'd call them breaks in development! We have a lot of preserved greenspace in the developed area. But there is also a lot o contiguous development. For example, it is pretty undeveloped between Oakland and Orinda - but then Orinda stars another burst of development towards Concord. There is still greenspace mixed back in. And of course, yes in east Oakland there is a ton of park land and wild life - not far from the city center.

The extra greenspace means the developed areas are pretty dense, but the undeveloped areas obscure the density.
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Old 04-17-2017, 12:48 PM
nei nei won $500 in our forum's Most Engaging Poster Contest - Thirteenth Edition (Jan-Feb 2015). 

Over $104,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum and additional contests are planned
 
Location: Western Massachusetts
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You can rank by density, I post numbers earlier
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