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That's not the issue. San Francisco, and the Bay Area in general, is far more dichotomous than Philadelphia when it comes to socioeconomics. Much like DC, in San Francisco you need a lot of money to live there...
How does New York escape this verdict? Brooklyn is more expensive than Washington DC and Manhattan where there are plenty of poor people, is more expensive than San Francisco.
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And Philadelphia is a city that's roughly 40 percent black, so logically many of the videos on YouTube are going to have black people in them.
[quote=Nineties Flava;20266214]Make a real argument for why these:
Certainly.
Laurel District (MacArthur Blvd):
Your first picture is near the intersection of MacArthur Blvd and Patterson Ave. While that section of MacArthur Blvd is lined with storefronts, you only have to go 3 blocks until you're here:
Furthermore, take a look at the residential street less than half a block off MacArthur (Patterson Ave). Keep in mind this is an area that YOU have chosen, which I presume you did because it's one of the denser parts of the city. The driveways, yards and space between houses obviously has a far more suburban character than the Philly rowhouses that directly abut the sidewalk.
There are probably twice as many houses on Cedar Ave as there are on Patterson Ave. And this is a long, long way from Center City, Philadelphia. You could walk up 52nd, take a left on Haverford, and see nothing but dense residential streets tucked in between commercial thoroughfares until you get to 69th Street. I mean, you could pretty much walk in any direction from this point and encounter nothing but rowhouses and storefronts.
This is why I prefer videos to photos. Videos, imo, tell more of the story than pics do.
How does New York escape this verdict? Brooklyn is more expensive than Washington DC and Manhattan where there are plenty of poor people, is more expensive than San Francisco.
Well, obviously, NYC is far larger than SF, so the yuppie to commoner ratio is much lower there. NYC just has a lot of everything. It's way too big to ever completely rid itself of a middle class. Places like Canarsie, Flatbush, the Flatlands, Sheepshead Bay and Bay Ridge will always be working middle-class. Again, the difference between NYC and the Bay is that the common folks live in rather dense urban areas whereas the commoners in the Bay live in suburban, albeit dense suburban, areas.
Philadelphia may be the last of a dying breed insofar as it's a very dense major city that still has a sizable middle class. Here in Washington, DC, you drive an Audi and shop at Whole Foods or you ride the G8 bus and use food stamps. There's very very little room for people who fall in between those two extremes.
Your first picture is near the intersection of MacArthur Blvd and Patterson Ave. While that section of MacArthur Blvd is lined with storefronts, you only have to go 3 blocks until you're here:
Furthermore, take a look at the residential street less than half a block off MacArthur (Patterson Ave). Keep in mind this is an area that YOU have chosen, which I presume you did because it's one of the denser parts of the city. The driveways, yards and space between houses obviously has a far more suburban character than the Philly rowhouses that directly abut the sidewalk.
There are probably twice as many houses on Cedar Ave as there are on Patterson Ave. And this is a long, long way from Center City, Philadelphia. You could walk up 52nd, take a left on Haverford, and see nothing but dense residential streets tucked in between commercial thoroughfares until you get to 69th Street. I mean, you could pretty much walk in any direction from this point and encounter nothing but rowhouses and storefronts.
This is why I prefer videos to photos. Videos, imo, tell more of the story than pics do.
So, your definition of urbanity is rowhouses? You'd have to have a pretty skewed perspective to think Oakland looked like a suburb compared to any actual west coast suburb. Does LA look like a suburb to you too?
^This is only 4 miles from the heart of Downtown Philadelphia.
The intersection of High Street and Macarthur which you picked is 15.7 miles from Downtown San Francisco.
I didn't pick it. Nineties Flava did. I just explored the area that he or she selected for a few blocks. Just for kicks, we can go alllllllll the way past Cottman Ave in the "suburban" Northeast and you see the same thing. This is getting pretty close to Franklin Mills and the end of the city limits.
Here is 10 Miles without a Bay. To me this is basically along the N/S line where the rowhomes change to twins - this is basically a 15-16 mile stretch of unbroken rowhomes - the other part is this expanse ranges from 5 miles to 12 miles wide along this stretch and some continues outside the Philly borders. the pics that Bajan showed are only 10 blocks from the Physicial border of Philly and beyond it is just more of the same but no longer in the city
Also remeber that Philly is 135 sq miles and the core extended beyond has many similar development that just continues past the borders. There are over 2 million people in the core 200 sq miles, it is a large and concentrated footprint, not as linear along the bay as in SF.
And this further west from where Bajan posted across the Philly border
So, your definition of urbanity is rowhouses? You'd have to have a pretty skewed perspective to think Oakland looked like a suburb compared to any actual west coast suburb. Does LA look like a suburb to you too?
No. I just think (as most people would) that buildings that are connected create a more urban environment than buildings or houses that are detached. I mean, the very definition of "suburbia" is detached housing, driveways, and yards.
Coming from Philly, Oakland looks suburban to me. I can't say whether it looks suburban compared to an "actual west coast suburb" because I haven't spent that much time on the West Coast. I can say that it looks like some of the denser East Coast burbs, though. Take a look at Somerville, Mass, for example.
I didn't pick it. Nineties Flava did. I just explored the area that he or she selected for a few blocks. Just for kicks, we can go alllllllll the way past Cottman Ave in the "suburban" Northeast and you see the same thing. This is getting pretty close to Franklin Mills and the end of the city limits.
Your position keeps changing. The first time it was "there's nowhere in Oakland where there's continuous storefronts". I show you multiple places with continuous storefronts. Then it turns into "I meant that there's no neighborhoods in Oakland as densely built as Philly's neighborhoods". Montclair's Oakland neighborhood statistics contradict that. Basically, for some reason you refuse to believe that west coast style urbanity is actually urban.
And forget SF, Laurel is further away from Downtown Oakland than your example was from Downtown Philly. If you want to look at examples closer into Downtown Oakland, be my guest:
What part of this doesn't look densely constructed to you?
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You'd have to have a pretty skewed perspective to think Oakland looked like a suburb compared to any actual west coast suburb. Does LA look like a suburb to you too?