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3. How is that different from "the city"? I bet if you looked at the stats for every city in the US you would find that to be true. Just eyeballing the chart for Boston, a city we talk about all the time, it looks like about 15% of people walk to work. Pittsburgh, which supposedly has one of the highest percentages of ppl walking to work, has about 10% of workers walking.
Yeah, I suspect very few places have more than 50% of people walking to work. If there are, it's probably a compact small town with a lot of jobs since that means people can work nearby. The city of Toronto has only 8.8% of people walking/biking to work. Victoria, BC might be the city with the most people walking/biking to work in Canada at 32.9%. Looking at some census tracts of Toronto, even downtown it seems like it's around 30% walking/biking. In a big city, even if there are a lot of jobs nearby, there are also a lot of jobs further, and it's likely that that's where you work.
Statistics Canada went over the distinction between urban and suburban (they actually used the terms city and suburb though). If you click the link, they'll go intomore detail about the different methods of distinguishing.
Got a chance to read this and it seems there is no single definition that works. Good discussion of why both "city limits" and "population density" don't give accurate definitions. They also discuss "pre war" vs "post war", but agree there are many exceptions. Two other methods discussed were "distance to city centre" and "percent of single family homes". So after reading this tread and the above link, I can safely say "there is no offical, one size fits all definition of urban / suburban"
What a great article. I particularly liked this conclusion:
Much has been said of the fundamental differences between urban and suburban neighbourhoods or central and peripheral neighbourhoods: different quality of life, clearly distinct socio-demographic and economic profiles, differing values, and so on. Yet we seldom have solid data that could be used to determine whether these putative differences are myth or reality. And when such data are available, we sometimes have trouble distinguishing clearly between urban and suburban areas because we lack clear definitions or concepts for delineating them.
There is still a large density contrast in suburb vs city in Europe.
Look at a Parisan suburb:
...
lots are small but there's no mistaking it for the city:
...
Picked two extremes but the difference is clear. The Paris suburb is built around a train station and looks very walkable, though there are highways as well.
This sort of proved my point about suburban and urban being two different scales for measuring things. I have no doubt that Wburg or another west-coast poster would look at the Parisian suburb and say it was "urban," as it looks like most western neighborhoods outside of the CBD. Roughly the same built density serves "urban" needs in in the U.S. and "suburban" ones in France.
I do note, however, that few houses in the French suburb seem to have driveways. In my own mind the presence or absence of driveways and garages is a big marker of the difference between low-density "urban" and high-density "suburban" within the U.S.
Still, there will always be some density difference between a city core and edges, if only because land prices will be cheaper away from the core, which will mean less expensive, sparser construction makes somewhat more economic sense.
Quote:
Originally Posted by nei
The suburb part of streetcar suburb never made sense to me; if it's structurally dense then it's just urban and it's not, it's suburban. I can kinda feel for Park Slope. While Park Slope has a high population density for American standards, relative to Manhattan, which has services and amnetities for visitors/workers while Park Slope is mostly residential and services for the people who live in the immediate area. So feels like you've escaped to a more peaceful place with as much "city stuff" going on. Not that Park Slope is all that sleepy of a place.
Streetcar suburbs (in the form of horsecar suburbs) were the original suburbs, as they allowed the gentry to commute away from the dirt and the noise to a quiet, almost entirely residential, neighborhood. Yes, those neighborhoods were walkable, given no one had cars at that time, but the foundation of living in a "sub-urban" place, instead of in the city center near your job (and poor people) began then.
1. No. This myth will seemingly never die. Large collections of people need businesses to sustain life, e.g. grocery stores, hair salons, department stores, professional services (lawyers, doctors, etc).
As part of my job (being a union researcher for UE, and having some public-sector shops, I review municipal finances from time to time), I sometimes look at the Grand List of various towns, mainly in Connecticut. Traditional suburbs have the vast majority of their revenue come from residential property. It's only the cities which really show a "mixed use" when it comes to a pretty even balance of residential and commercial property, with some holdover indusrial as well.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Katiana
2. Maybe from the urban core but not always from employment centers. There are four high-tech 'nodes' in the Denver area: downtown; the Denver Tech Center which I believe has a tiny portion in Denver but is mainly south of the city; Broomfield, northwest of the city; Boulder, farther northwest.
Then neighborhoods adjacent to those job centers are less suburban.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Katiana
3. How is that different from "the city"? I bet if you looked at the stats for every city in the US you would find that to be true. Just eyeballing the chart for Boston, a city we talk about all the time, it looks like about 15% of people walk to work. Pittsburgh, which supposedly has one of the highest percentages of ppl walking to work, has about 10% of workers walking.
This was actually exactly what I had in mind! Thanks for finding the data to prove it.
As I said, the traditional city throughout history involved people walking to work, and a mixed-use community. Bigger cities were essentially a bunch of small cities (neighborhoods) pressed against one another.
Thus I would say, for example, a college town is more urban in terms of its function even when it doesn't have structural density. It may look like a suburb to some extent, but if most people are walking, biking, using a free campus shuttle, or at worst taking a 5-10 minute drive, it's clearly not suburban, as it's not really linked much to any remote CBD. Military bases work the same way, but had slipped my mind.
For somewhere like Boston, I'd actually say that the most functionally urban line up closely with structurally urban - places like the North End and Back Bay, which are a handful of blocks away from the CBD. Or elsewhere in the MSA, much of Cambridge.
As for Pittsburgh, it's funny how history changes things. Many of former mill neighborhoods were constructed to be highly urban. For example, my own neighborhood of Lawrenceville originally had many active factories along the river, which employed the population living on the flats and slope. South Side was the same. However, with the closing of the mills, relatively few locals who work actually work in the neighborhood. I bike to work downtown every day, and I'm always surprised, when I head back home, that my car is often the only one on the block. But ironically, the mass transit that Pittsburgh provides is concentrated now to allow the middle class to commute to work, while working-class jobs are distributed in areas inaccessible by transit. Thus, the neighborhood now functions as if it is a suburb, even though structurally it's still very dense, and it has a (now gentrified) vibrant mixed-use commercial area.
(Katiana)2. Maybe from the urban core but not always from employment centers. There are four high-tech 'nodes' in the Denver area: downtown; the Denver Tech Center which I believe has a tiny portion in Denver but is mainly south of the city; Broomfield, northwest of the city; Boulder, farther northwest.
Then neighborhoods adjacent to those job centers are less suburban.
Except for downtown, no.
Quote:
Thus I would say, for example, a college town is more urban in terms of its function even when it doesn't have structural density. It may look like a suburb to some extent, but if most people are walking, biking, using a free campus shuttle, or at worst taking a 5-10 minute drive, it's clearly not suburban, as it's not really linked much to any remote CBD. Military bases work the same way, but had slipped my mind.
You really need to read memph's article about how to define a suburb. If the professionals can't define the term, I don't know how we can throw it around so casually, with people using it to describe anything they don't like. Regarding the city-data link of cities with the most people walking to work, only 3 of the 101 have more than 50% doing so, and two are military bases. This is, to say the least, a highly specialized type of city.
ETA: #2, the Air Force Academy, is both a college "town" and a military base (of sorts).
Last edited by Katarina Witt; 06-23-2012 at 07:36 AM..
On the Boston walk to work - the context is totally wrong and why is not surprising. The anti urban noise (the urban noise can be just as bad). To look at urban commuting patterns it cant be just wlaking to work. I say look at all forms less car/carpooling.
For Boston that is about 50% (far far better than the VAST majority in the US).
Also on wlaking it is services and shopping etc that are harder to quantify but dramtically different on form if you have actually lived in different incarnations....
As part of my job (being a union researcher for UE, and having some public-sector shops, I review municipal finances from time to time), I sometimes look at the Grand List of various towns, mainly in Connecticut. Traditional suburbs have the vast majority of their revenue come from residential property. It's only the cities which really show a "mixed use" when it comes to a pretty even balance of residential and commercial property, with some holdover indusrial as well.
Then neighborhoods adjacent to those job centers are less suburban.
This was actually exactly what I had in mind! Thanks for finding the data to prove it.
As I said, the traditional city throughout history involved people walking to work, and a mixed-use community. Bigger cities were essentially a bunch of small cities (neighborhoods) pressed against one another.
Thus I would say, for example, a college town is more urban in terms of its function even when it doesn't have structural density. It may look like a suburb to some extent, but if most people are walking, biking, using a free campus shuttle, or at worst taking a 5-10 minute drive, it's clearly not suburban, as it's not really linked much to any remote CBD. Military bases work the same way, but had slipped my mind.
For somewhere like Boston, I'd actually say that the most functionally urban line up closely with structurally urban - places like the North End and Back Bay, which are a handful of blocks away from the CBD. Or elsewhere in the MSA, much of Cambridge.
As for Pittsburgh, it's funny how history changes things. Many of former mill neighborhoods were constructed to be highly urban. For example, my own neighborhood of Lawrenceville originally had many active factories along the river, which employed the population living on the flats and slope. South Side was the same. However, with the closing of the mills, relatively few locals who work actually work in the neighborhood. I bike to work downtown every day, and I'm always surprised, when I head back home, that my car is often the only one on the block. But ironically, the mass transit that Pittsburgh provides is concentrated now to allow the middle class to commute to work, while working-class jobs are distributed in areas inaccessible by transit. Thus, the neighborhood now functions as if it is a suburb, even though structurally it's still very dense, and it has a (now gentrified) vibrant mixed-use commercial area.
This is very interesting and very true and more common accross many areas. Transit has not kept up with job mobility and many gentrified nabes within cities can now function as suburban commuter style patterns (Manyunk in Philadelphia is another perfect example like those you reference in Pittsburgh)
In this map of NYC, you can see a decrease in public transit ridership as you get to the city center (lower third of Manhattan), with walking taking up the increase. A few district have a walk commute rate of 30-40%, higher than many college towns.
As part of my job (being a union researcher for UE, and having some public-sector shops, I review municipal finances from time to time), I sometimes look at the Grand List of various towns, mainly in Connecticut. Traditional suburbs have the vast majority of their revenue come from residential property. It's only the cities which really show a "mixed use" when it comes to a pretty even balance of residential and commercial property, with some holdover indusrial as well.
Allow me to point you to King of Prussia, Pennsylvania, home of the King of Prussia Mall. About as suburban as you can get, and with a large commercial area (not just the Mall). Used to have some industry too. In contrast, there's a number of actual small cities (suburbs, but not really suburban) nearby, Norristown, PA, Bridgeport, PA, and Conshohocken, PA, which have less commerce, though that's largely because they're burned-out industrial.
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