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Great information, an interesting question would be: How many square miles does it take each of the largest cities to hit 1,000,000 people? I know that is an arbitrary number, but that population point should give an idea of which cities are densest/most urban.
I would wager it looks like this:
NYC - ~13 sq miles
Chicago/LA - ~45 sq miles
San Fran - ~55 sq miles
Philly - ~60 sq miles
Boston - ~70 sq miles
DC - ~100 sq miles
Probably spot on....especially with LA. While marothisu pointed out some people aren't familiar with Chicago, I think even less are familiar with how dense that city is in its inner neighborhoods.
Probably spot on....especially with LA. While marothisu pointed out some people aren't familiar with Chicago, I think even less are familiar with how dense that city is in its inner neighborhoods.
Definitely. I think some of it just goes on people who have actually explored the city versus ones who haven't. Most people who visit the city have never been outside of Near North, The Loop, and maybe Wrigleyville for Cubs games, Near West for Bulls/Blackhawks, and Bridgeport for Sox games (though the United Center and US Cellular Field are in dead areas) so they are shocked about the fact that there are tons of people in dense neighborhoods miles outside of the touristic areas.
Same with LA too. While LA is less urban than NYC and Chicago, there are definitely areas, like Koreatown, where it's pretty damn dense for US standards and just as dense, if not more dense, than some areas of Chicago.
Probably spot on....especially with LA. While marothisu pointed out some people aren't familiar with Chicago, I think even less are familiar with how dense that city is in its inner neighborhoods.
A zip code comparison is useless, though. Zip codes aren't assigned based on population. They're basically random. You could have a city where 90% of people live in dense zip codes with lower density than a city where 90% of people live in sparse zip codes.
I wouldn't say useless, but perhaps a better way to measure it would be census tracts... I guess it really depends on how large the zip codes are and if high-density areas within a zip code are dragged down due to non-residential or very low density areas that are also within that zip code. In that case people that live above a certain density may not be counted towards it because their overall zip code is lower density.
I wouldn't say useless, but perhaps a better way to measure it would be census tracts... I guess it really depends on how large the zip codes are and if high-density areas within a zip code are dragged down due to non-residential or very low density areas that are also within that zip code. In that case people that live above a certain density may not be counted towards it because their overall zip code is lower density.
Is there a way to download all of the census tracts in excel? I think any use of census tracts will need to use Excel functions...otherwise there's just far too much data.
Is there a way to download all of the census tracts in excel? I think any use of census tracts will need to use Excel functions...otherwise there's just far too much data.
I agree, it would be way to time-consuming for anyone on here to wade through that info...
Perhaps the US Census has some sort of function on their site, though I cannot really get a handle on their database system. Seems like a lot of posters on here do though.
Is there a way to download all of the census tracts in excel? I think any use of census tracts will need to use Excel functions...otherwise there's just far too much data.
includes latitude and longitude as well as housing unit amounts. You can get excel to open text. Another method to narrow down tracts to a specific place or county:
1) Go to factfinder2.census.gov
2) Click "advanced search" then the Show All button
3) Type "GCT-PH1" under "topic or table name", don't select any of the choices that may pop up in the drop down menu. Click Go instead
4) Once the results are listed on the screen, click the "geographies" button.
5) Below select a geographic type, choose county (or something else)
6) Choose a state, and place
7) Then click "Population, Housing Units, Area, and Density: 2010 - County -- Census Tract"
8) There's an option to Download the data in various formats (including csv and excel) but unlike the first method census tract latitude and longitude not included.
9) You can also create a custom map
A third, easiest visualize (my preference unless I'm actually interested in doing number crunching) is the census maps from the NYTimes or Washington Post:
Great information, an interesting question would be: How many square miles does it take each of the largest cities to hit 1,000,000 people? I know that is an arbitrary number, but that population point should give an idea of which cities are densest/most urban.
I would wager it looks like this:
NYC - ~13 sq miles
Chicago/LA - ~45 sq miles
San Fran - ~55 sq miles
Philly - ~60 sq miles
Boston - ~70 sq miles
DC - ~100 sq miles
Out of curiosity I did this for Boston and got about 77 square miles to reach about 1.2 million people.
I also did it for San Francisco and used only areas in San Mateo county and it took about 72 square miles to reach about 1.2 million people.
I think looking at this Philly would probably also take about 70 square miles to reach a population of 1 million.
I would think Chicago would be close to 60 and LA would be somewhere between 50 and 70.
I may be way off on Chicago and LA because I don't know those cities very well so if someone wants to crunch the numbers and see I would love to know but I just do not have the time.
Isn't Boston arguably more urban than Chicago? I mean, couldn't you reverse the question?
Now Chicago, unquestionably, has FAR, FAR more highrises and is much bigger, but Boston has more narrow streets, rowhouses, pedestrian scale, and underground rail, and Chicago has more parking garages, wide streets, freeways, and auto-oriented infrastructure (drive-through banks and fast food right off Michigan Ave., for example). Boston has higher transit share and lower proportion of residents owning cars. It's small but tightly built, and the urbanity doesn't get much better in the U.S. (excepting NYC).
Boston is more European-style urban, and Chicago is more American-style urban. I think an argument can be made for either city regarding relative urbanity.
One could also describe Chicago as being more like an Asian city than a European one. Very few people would question Paris as feeling urban, despite the fact that the entire center of the city is a historic core, undamaged by WWII, with high rises only the periphery. So I'm not sure why a city has to be defined by the skyscrapers in the US.
Also, Bostons urban sprawl is nearly as extensive as Chicagolands, its just that surrounding Boston, you have suburbs that have way more trees that screen out the urban sprawl. The most woodsy suburbs, such as the north shore, Riverside, Glen Ellyn, Flossmoor and others are typical of areas surrounding Boston. So, it looks more rural.
Thats largely because a lot of the pre-sprawl rural landscape was largely forested, with farm field in the middle of the woods. Outside Chicago, it was small patches of woods in the middle of farm fields. So the urban sprawl is more visible, because the houses, etc. were built around trees, because there were none. It was more prairie and fields.
Plus, a lot of small cities outside Boston are not considered part of the metro area, partially because they are in a different state, partially because they had their own identity.
Bostons urban/suburban sprawl extends to Providence, RI, Worcester, MA, and Portsmouth, NH. You can see this on google maps/earth.
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