Densest cities in a first world country (metropolitan, areas)

[paull805]

Parts of Holland are as dense as your gonna get in the western world. The Randstad (Rotterdam, Hague, Utrecht, Amsterdam) is very densely populated

[french user]

Originally Posted by paull805

Parts of Holland are as dense as your gonna get in the western world. The Randstad (Rotterdam, Hague, Utrecht, Amsterdam) is very densely populated

Yes, Holland is very dense. But this is a land density, this is different form urban density.
The ranstad area is densily populated as a land, becuase most of the space of this area is mostly urban, surburban or semi urban, with fields and such in between, but the different urban areas are very close to each other. But the urban tissue of those Dutch cities are not very dense at all.

Inversely, in Spain, the country is one of the least dense of all Europe while its cities are among the densiest.

Density is a difficult concept because it changes for a same place in function of the area of reference, we should always be careful when comparing densitites to be sure that the things we compare are of the same nature (city center/city center; whole country/whole country; urban area/urban area; metropilitan space/metropolitan space, etc.)

[Nationalistdefeator]

Originally Posted by Cold As War

Cool answers

N America - NY, Chicago, Toronto
Asia - Tokyo, Hong Kong, Seoul, Singapore
Europe - London, Paris, Barcelona, Madrid

Anymore?????

Montreal is actually more dense then Toronto and might even be one of the most dense of Canada's largest cities. Also, neither city is even close to Los Angeles in density.

Montreal 4,517/km2
Toronto 4,149/km2

[grapico]

NYC is the only city in the U.S. that matches up with Paris, London, Barcelona, and Madrid in their 50sq mile or cores, which is basically what matters...who cares about metro density, such a stupid statistic for getting how a city feels. no other cities comes even close. Some smaller cities in Europe (far more than other U.S. cities) with super high density but smaller are Milan, Naples, Valencia and Marseilles, basically picture if San Francisco was almost dense as Manhattan allover... German, British and Scandivanian cities have good design but aren't that dense usually, w/ exception of Central London.

Not sure if you consider Buenos Aires first world...but Buenos Aires... also Tokyo, Seoul and Hong Kong...

That about wraps it up.

[OyCrumbler]

Originally Posted by grapico

NYC is the only city in the U.S. that matches up with Paris, London, Barcelona, and Madrid in their 50sq mile or cores, which is basically what matters...who cares about metro density, such a stupid statistic for getting how a city feels. no other cities comes even close. Some smaller cities in Europe (far more than other U.S. cities) with super high density but smaller are Milan, Naples, Valencia and Marseilles, basically picture if San Francisco was almost dense as Manhattan allover... German, British and Scandivanian cities have good design but aren't that dense usually, w/ exception of Central London.

Not sure if you consider Buenos Aires first world...but Buenos Aires... also Tokyo, Seoul and Hong Kong...

That about wraps it up.

Taipei is very dense as well and would fit pretty neatly within your list of smaller dense cities as would Osaka and possibly a few other cities in Japan. If you give Singapore a pass on how it's leaving aside large parts of the city from dense development, then Singapore could count too. Maybe Santiago in Chile would count, too, as I know it's nestled in the mountains so it might be the stats include a lot of undeveloped areas, but I've never been there so I don't really know.

[marlaver]

Originally Posted by grapico

NYC is the only city in the U.S. that matches up with Paris, London, Barcelona, and Madrid in their 50sq mile or cores, which is basically what matters...who cares about metro density, such a stupid statistic for getting how a city feels. no other cities comes even close. Some smaller cities in Europe (far more than other U.S. cities) with super high density but smaller are Milan, Naples, Valencia and Marseilles, basically picture if San Francisco was almost dense as Manhattan allover... German, British and Scandivanian cities have good design but aren't that dense usually, w/ exception of Central London.

Not sure if you consider Buenos Aires first world...but Buenos Aires... also Tokyo, Seoul and Hong Kong...

That about wraps it up.

It is exactly the other way. To compare the metropolitan densities is the most objective method. Any other division is purely arbitrary.

[OyCrumbler]

Originally Posted by marlaver

It is exactly the other way. To compare the metropolitan densities is the most objective method. Any other division is purely arbitrary.

I think he was more talking about cities with the largest core over a certain density threshold. Having a lot of tightly packed single family home suburbs with very little greenspace/public space can give some decent density numbers but won't necessarily have large spans of high peak densities that the cities he listed have.

[nei]

Originally Posted by marlaver

It is exactly the other way. To compare the metropolitan densities is the most objective method. Any other division is purely arbitrary.

The core of the metro is usually where "the big city feel" is. An overall metro density can be skewed by leafy suburbs that hold fewer people, for example.

[Deezus]

Originally Posted by OyCrumbler

Maybe Santiago in Chile would count, too, as I know it's nestled in the mountains so it might be the stats include a lot of undeveloped areas, but I've never been there so I don't really know.

Santiago is pretty dense, but it struck me as being consistently dense but fairly sprawling. Sort of similar to a smaller Mexico City, but with a similar streetscape. The core itself has good structural density, always feels busy, and has areas with fairly dense concentrations of skyscrapers. But a lot of the rest of the city was sort of mid-rise or low-rise neighborhoods that fairly dense in similar way to other Latin American cities.

Athens is a city that's pretty dense as well, that doesn't get mentioned a lot on these threads. The core is pretty dense for a European city.

[marlaver]

Originally Posted by nei

The core of the metro is usually where "the big city feel" is. An overall metro density can be skewed by leafy suburbs that hold fewer people, for example.

We are discussing about demography, not about feelings. Take for instance NYC: certainly his big city feel is in Manhattan. But the reality is that Manhattan only represents a little part of what a giant city like NYC is. Manhattan has a population of 1.6k, wich is only 1/14 of the total NYC metro population (Combined Statistical Area). This indicates that 13/14 of newyorkers lives outside of Manhattan. They live in a neighbourhoods like this:

https://maps.google.com.ar/maps?q=bo...312.79,,0,1.59

That is the main demographic reality of NYC, not the skyscrapers of Manhattan.