Canadian vs. Nordic large cities (rank, villa, dental)
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Sure Canadian cities have more highways, less bikeable [though many are decent for North American standards] and sprawly suburbia and of course more skyscraper clusters, but it's possible Canadian cities have as many or more people living in the center city than Nordic cities. Not sure how you'd do a direct comparison, maybe a 2 or 5 mile radius from a city center?
For example, Vancouver has 44,000 people downtown (11,600 / square km) and another 55,000 (56,500 / square km) in its adjacent West End together comprise the downtown peninsula or center city. And there are several nearby neighborhoods that aren't far.
Stockholm has like 700,000 people in its downtown. Much bigger than Vancouver. In every way.
Somehow I doubt that people who like dense, vibrant urban environments would be dissatisfied with Canadian cities like Toronto, Montreal and even Vancouver. At least not for this specific criteria (density and "action" on the streets), and especially not in comparison to Nordic cities.
Just to chip in again (for whatever it's worth): I'd rather live in a war-ridden Ukraine than live in a Nordic country. Hell, I'd probably rather kill myself than to live there.
As for the Nordic cities, when I've been there and also through photos I've seen, I've found them to be fairly comparable to these Canadian cities except for the things that I've already mentioned here: better urbanity extending further out from the centre, and of course better and more charming architecture.
Other than that I don't feel the Canadian cities are lacking in terms of vibrancy and energy at all. Their central areas are every bit as lively if not more than the ones in the Nordics.
I really like the Nordic cities (and would pretty happily live in any of them) but the only place in the Nordic capitals where I felt "hey, this is something really, really special" was on Stroget in central Copenhagen.
Blue is the Centre, Suomenlinna fortress and the Lauttasaari district. 108k inhabitants. The brown inner city district has 89k, the purple (southern half) around 60k. Around 260k total.
Read it how you like, i can't say
How big of an area is that? Toronto's downtown alone is over 200K in 17 (yes 17 not 170) sq km's and that doesn't even touch the many urban areas bordering just the core.
Stockholm has like 700,000 people in its downtown. Much bigger than Vancouver. In every way.
hmmmmm Vancouver has a population of 604K people in just the city in an area of 114.9 sq km's.. Stockholm looks to have 900K in 188 sq km's.... In the areas measured they look to be very similar in size/density and of course Vancouver doesn't just end after 114.9 sq km's as city boundaries are highly arbitrary..
Even metro population for both look remarkable similar though Vancouver's metro (2.4 million in 2900 sq km's) looks to be more compact than Stockholm's (2.2 million in am I reading this right an enormous 6520 sq km's - that has to be half the size of Sweden lol) - so your contention 'in every way' seems totally off base.. Really these two look very comparable particularly in urban area density and size and in metro it appears Vancouver packs more people in a much smaller area and thus is a slightly more populated but much more dense metro.
Why not Helsinki? It has more inhabitants than the city of Vancouver.
Yeah but we have established that borders are arbitrary.. For example, Vancouver the city with its arbitrary border (it doesn't just end there) has 604K people in 114.9 sq km's... Is there any area of Helsinki that can match that?
hmmmmm Vancouver has a population of 604K people in just the city in an area of 114.9 sq km's.. Stockholm looks to have 900K in 188 sq km's.... In the areas measured they look to be very similar in size/density and of course Vancouver doesn't just end after 114.9 sq km's as city boundaries are highly arbitrary..
Even metro population for both look remarkable similar though Vancouver's metro (2.4 million in 2900 sq km's) looks to be more compact than Stockholm's (2.2 million in am I reading this right an enormous 6520 sq km's - that has to be half the size of Sweden lol) - so your contention 'in every way' seems totally off base.. Really these two look very comparable particularly in urban area density and size and in metro it appears Vancouver packs more people in a much smaller area and thus is a slightly more populated but much more dense metro.
Cool. Well like I said then, Nordic cities got nothing on Canadian cities.
Well i'm speaking just to population and density which aren't the only factors in terms of good street level urbanity or interesting culture/things to do.. I would personally hold off any judgement until i'm more thoroughly acquainted with Nordic cities.. With all that said, I think the generalizations that just because Canadian cities may appear to have more 'sprawl' or larger highrise clusters and are thus automatically less urban or that nordic cities are smaller in population and thus boring and less interesting should probably be thrown out the window. The world is a big place - its great we have things like Canadian and Nordic cities and many other different and interesting places - imagine if the entire world was made up of homogenuous cities from small regions.. I wouldn't want that at all.
How big of an area is that? Toronto's downtown alone is over 200K in 17 (yes 17 not 170) sq km's and that doesn't even touch the many urban areas bordering just the core.
Looks like it's around the same, 18 sq km. The fortress takes 2, and the islands maybe 2-3 sq km off that.
Quote:
Originally Posted by fusion2
Yeah but we have established that borders are arbitrary.. For example, Vancouver the city with its arbitrary border (it doesn't just end there) has 604K people in 114.9 sq km's... Is there any area of Helsinki that can match that?
624K people in 715 sq km's?? If that is correct than Vancouver city looks to be way more dense than Helsinki city.
Well, it is technically correct, but how do you build buildings on water? Helsinki's land area is 214 sq km, and much of that is unbuilt too. I made a map to show this once. Here it is:
Suomelinna is the fortress, an UNESCO site.
1. is Haltiala National Park
2. is the Central Park
3. is uninhabitable swampland
4. a military base island
5. Kivisaari, owned by the church and used as a camping and recreational area
6. uninhabited archipelago islands
7. recently annexed area from neighbouring muncipality, part of it is of the NATURA 2000 National Park
8. Seurasaari-Meilahti heritage museum and villa area. The Presidental residence is also there.
These eat a lot of the land area and the situation is different from Vancouver, where you can build anything anywhere.
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