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Portland literally has a belt of forested hills on the south and west side of its downtown:
It's a great park, but it's 3 miles or so wide and then back to suburbs. The San Francisco preserved land doesn't have development on the other side other than ocean (west of the bay) or is 8+ miles of greenbelt (east of bay).
Vancouver is another city with natural land close to downtown, even more so. But the OP asked for US cities.
It's a great park, but it's 3 miles or so wide and then back to suburbs. The San Francisco preserved land doesn't have development on the other side other than ocean (west of the bay) or is 8+ miles of greenbelt (east of bay).
Vancouver is another city with natural land close to downtown, even more so. But the OP asked for US cities.
The OP asked for cities without sprawl. There is no way on earth you can convince me the Bay Area does not have sprawl, no matter how many pictures of pristine area you put up.
We discussed something like this once before, about how far you had to go to find open/rural land from various cities, but with CD's sucky search engine, I can't find my post that shows Denver.
I'm not trying to argue the Bay Area has no sprawl, nor did I say it doesn't anywhere. The point of the pictures (well other than i like posting my photos) is that pristine land near is outside development not in the midst.
Well it sounded like you were curious about Long Island! Paragraph, was just a link to photos, didn't they look out of development? My examples were outside (and earlier), not in the midst of the urban area (MSA is county lines so technically still in the midst of a MSA). I'm not talking about a city park. I'm not sure what's hard to get
gray is developed area. most of the green is preserved land, it's not in the midst of a big MSA, it's outside. Distance from light gray to green is short in most of the Bay Area
San Francisco has a lot of sprawl. That's a very zoomed out satellite image of the San Francisco Bay Area. It's huge. It's a huge suburb. Those are covering large distances. Also, the reason why they don't build on those green areas is because they are tall mountains and you can't easily build on them. Otherwise, they would've built on them. The fact that they're willing to go out as far as they do, shows you just how much of a sprawl there is.
San Francisco has a lot of sprawl. That's a very zoomed out satellite image of the San Francisco Bay Area. It's huge. It's a huge suburb. Those are covering large distances. Also, the reason why they don't build on those green areas is because they are tall mountains and you can't easily build on them. Otherwise, they would've built on them. The fact that they're willing to go out as far as they do, shows you just how much of a sprawl there is.
I think Nei was trying to say that it's not that hard to get to wilderness/rural lands from SF despite its sprawl. You just have to cross the Golden Gate Bridge, and bam you are out of the urban landscape, whereas cities such as Atlanta or Boston you have travel pretty far to get outside of the urban/suburban lands. So SF has an illusion of not being sprawly because you can escape it fairly easily.
I think Nei was trying to say that it's not that hard to get to wilderness/rural lands from SF despite its sprawl. You just have to cross the Golden Gate Bridge, and bam you are out of the urban landscape, whereas cities such as Atlanta or Boston you have travel pretty far to get outside of the urban/suburban lands. So SF has an illusion of not being sprawly because you can escape it fairly easily.
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
Last edited by nei; 04-17-2017 at 04:24 PM..
Reason: miscalculation
I think Nei was trying to say that it's not that hard to get to wilderness/rural lands from SF despite its sprawl. You just have to cross the Golden Gate Bridge, and bam you are out of the urban landscape, whereas cities such as Atlanta or Boston you have travel pretty far to get outside of the urban/suburban lands. So SF has an illusion of not being sprawly because you can escape it fairly easily.
Yeah, that is a unique feature of city, although, I'd say some place like Portland or Vancouver would probably be better. Especially since a lot of that area where the Golden Gate Bridge is really just mountains and not very accessible. It's still very scenic though.
No one has mentioned Key West, FL. It's on a small island with nowhere else to grow. Someone, correct me if I'm wrong.
Also, Juneau, AK, a small city hemmed-in by mountains and by water. Including even its airport, which pilots find difficult.
Savannah, GA, immediately across the river from its downtown, seems to have no development at all on the SC side, except a convention center. I think the land is too swampy or unsuitable.
Richmond, VA, becomes rural very quickly to the east, and southeast of downtown (down-river). But it sprawls greatly in all other directions, especially to the west for many miles.
Last edited by slowlane3; 04-17-2017 at 04:15 AM..
I think Nei was trying to say that it's not that hard to get to wilderness/rural lands from SF despite its sprawl. You just have to cross the Golden Gate Bridge, and bam you are out of the urban landscape, whereas cities such as Atlanta or Boston you have travel pretty far to get outside of the urban/suburban lands. So SF has an illusion of not being sprawly because you can escape it fairly easily.
An illusion, yes. It's not really true though. Go to Cheyenne, Wyoming and you'll see the difference.
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
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