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Old 05-10-2012, 08:09 PM
 
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Quote:
Originally Posted by MDAllstar View Post
Drive down Connecticut ave from the spot south all the way to the national mall, it looks the same the whole way basically being the same height and all. Called downtown and "looking like downtown" are two different things. If you go back and read, I said DC has an advantage because of height limits that all the downtown development looks the same.

And Honestly, I cut downtown much more than the naked eye would be able to cut downtown. This is well above Massachusetts Ave. and looks exactly like downtown DC.

Logan Circle
washington dc - Google Maps
We have completely different definitions of what constitutes a downtown look.
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Old 05-10-2012, 08:09 PM
 
Location: Washington D.C.
13,687 posts, read 15,597,419 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Fitzrovian View Post
This seems fair except for the northwest border which looks generous to me (though i am not a DC expert).

Although, as you say, the contrast in DC is not as stark as what would be experienced in a skyscraper-dominated downtown, you could stlll very clearly see from Google satellite view the change in urban character roughly north of Massachusetts and east of Union Station. Based on that, I would say downtown DC is anywhere from 2 to 2.5 miles east to west and 1 to 1.5 miles north to south.

What boundaries do you use for downtown Chicago?
How is NOMA where Union Station is not apart of downtown DC? How is the U.S. Capital not the downtown southeastern edge? How is the federal SW complex not the southwest corner of downtown DC?
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Old 05-10-2012, 08:21 PM
 
Location: Washington D.C.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by FAReastcoast View Post
We have completely different definitions of what constitutes a downtown look.
Your definition of downtown would say Washington D.C. doesn't have a downtown because the buildings aren't tall enough.
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Old 05-10-2012, 08:25 PM
 
Location: Villanova Pa.
4,927 posts, read 14,160,776 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Jerry Sullivan View Post
Philadelphia Center City. How hard is it to look up stats instead of creating a damn thread.

Thread closed.
Yeah lets shut this one down and cal it a night.









http://farm7.staticflickr.com/6036/5...0b92a313_s.jpg



http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3179/5...2d595055_b.jpg
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Old 05-10-2012, 08:27 PM
 
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Quote:
Originally Posted by MDAllstar View Post
Your definition of downtown would say Washington D.C. doesn't have a downtown because the buildings aren't tall enough.
Not at all, but to call 14th street in Logan circle and Connecticut ave north of DuPont "downtown" is a huge stretch.
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Old 05-10-2012, 08:29 PM
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Location: Western Massachusetts
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This is a good graphic of the scale of 4 downtowns:

SkyscraperPage Forum - View Single Post - Day/Night Population Change Data

For NYC, a section between Downtown and Midtown (near Washington Square ?) would be a sizeable downtown in its own right if in another city. Downtown Brooklyn isn't shabby either. The scale of the top 3 cities (Chicago, San Francisco and DC) is the same. I think NYC is zoomed out by a factor of 2.
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Old 05-10-2012, 08:41 PM
 
Location: Washington D.C.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Fitzrovian View Post

What boundaries do you use for downtown Chicago?

Chicago is extremly hard to do compared to DC's boundaries because the downtown development is so long along the coast and thin stretching for miles even though it may only be a couple blocks wide. Instead of doing a southern and southeastern border and northern and northeastern border, I will show you where I believe the depth of Chicago's downtown ends meaning how deep it is in girth. That is the greatest measure of downtown when walking around east to west instead of just north to south.

Western Border
chicago il - Google Maps

Southwestern Border
chicago il - Google Maps

Northwestern Border
chicago il - Google Maps

Last edited by MDAllstar; 05-10-2012 at 08:50 PM..
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Old 05-10-2012, 08:45 PM
 
Location: Washington D.C.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by FAReastcoast View Post
Not at all, but to call 14th street in Logan circle and Connecticut ave north of DuPont "downtown" is a huge stretch.
Never said it was "considered" downtown DC. Actually, I'm sure most people don't even know how much of the development downtown is not considered traditional downtown DC.

For instance, this is not considered downtown DC and is not included in the downtown DC BID. It's called Golden Triangle:

washington dc - Google Maps

This is not considered downtown DC either, it's called the West End/Foggy Bottom:
http://maps.google.com/maps?q=washin...7.88,,0,0&z=17
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Old 05-10-2012, 08:46 PM
 
Location: Reading PA
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Default dt San Francisco

Having lived in the Tenderloin section of San Francisco, which by the way has 78000 people living in one square mile, is not considered part of dt San Francisco. dt San Francisco is the financial dist, embarcadero and misson bay





Quote:
Originally Posted by rah View Post
Downtown SF has more towers, more office space,
and more residents within an equivalent area, when compared to downtown Boston or Philly.



Which is less populated than Downtown SF, within an equal area as downtown SF. Therefore downtown SF has a larger AND denser downtown population than Philly. I'm sure you'll try to prove this wrong, good luck.

You have 58,000 residents within the "core center city" area, as described here: http://www.centercityphila.org/docs/...opleplaces.pdf

That area is 1.6 square miles.

Downtown San Francisco is also about 1.6 square miles, coincidentally, but it packs 80,000 residents into that area, as well as 40 million more square feet of office space than in Philly.



So to compare the two:

Center City Philly (the "Center City core"):

roughly 1.6 square miles
57,239 residents (as of 2010)
40 million square feet of class A/class B office space
the majority of the city's 363 highrises (including 76 skyscrapers)

Downtown San Francisco:

roughly 1.6 square miles
79,771 residents (as of 2010)
83 million square feet of class A/class B office space
the majority of the city's 412 highrises (including 84 skyscrapers)

Center City Philly, showing the "core", the "core + adjacent census tracts", and the entire "extended" area:



And here's downtown SF (note: these two maps are not at equal scales, the SF one is zoomed in more):



^SF was measured using census tracts, the most accurate measurement I could use (downtown SF has no official promotional website like Center City does, which is where i got that Philly data/map from). I'd guess that maybe 5,000 to 10,000 extra residents are counted for SF when measuring with tracts, because some tracts that include downtown areas happen to extend beyond downtown as well...but with a lead of over 20,000 residents within an equivalent area to center city, DT SF would undoubtedly still come out ahead if we could somehow get the boundaries 100% exact.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: Stats are not needed for this to be believable, in my experience. Center city Philly "feels" very large, but downtown SF to me "feels" even larger, and the stats only prove why that is. Because it IS larger in terms of number of residents and the number of skyscrapers when compared to the equivalent sized area in Philly.

DT SF also has more office space than CC Philly (and i assume more retail space than CC too), so it would be reasonable to assume that DT SF has a larger workforce...but due to not having an official downtown website full of data, there are no numbers available for SF's total downtown workforce that I can find, so we can't know for sure.



"extended" center city? 7.8 square miles?

lmao, talk about reaching...first off, you might want to know that "extended center city" is actually 5.6 square miles, not 7.8 square miles, and it has 164,512 residents, not 180,000 residents.

sources: http://www.centercityphila.org/docs/...opleplaces.pdf (population #'s + definitions of center city boundaries).
Google Maps Area Calculator Tool (to map out the land area in square miles)

And the majority of those 5.6 square miles (let alone 7.8 sq. mi.) are in no way "downtown" Philadelphia even though they're included within the "extended" center city area. That's an area nearly 3 times larger than downtown/the loop in Chicago (which interestingly is also about 1.6 square miles, just like the "center city core" and DT SF), or 5 times larger going by the incorrect 7.8 square mile definition...you're not trying to say that you think Philly's downtown is bigger in land area than downtown Chicago, are you? I think that right there outlines just how much extra area is taken in by the "extended" Center City definition. It's honestly pretty ridiculous to consider much, if anything, beyond the "center city core" as being within Philly's downtown.

Seriously, these following areas are considered "center city/downtown" when using that extended 5.6 square mile definition:

Philadelphia, PA - Google Maps
Philadelphia, PA - Google Maps
Philadelphia, PA - Google Maps
Philadelphia, PA - Google Maps


Sorry, but those do not look like downtown areas to me.

Maybe I'll "extend" downtown SF so that it encompasses 5.6 or 7.8 square miles too. I can assure you the 5.6 to 7.8 square miles including/surrounding downtown SF has at least as many people as the equivalent area in Philly, or at least comes close, and I'd be willing to bet the same is true of Chicago, and Boston can't be too far off from those three either...though at the moment I don't feel like spending any more time mining through data just to prove you wrong. But really, it doesn't matter, as 7.8 or 5.6 square miles would be way bigger than downtown SF, Boston, or Chicago anyways, just as it's way bigger than the true downtown Philly area (AKA the "center city core").

Center City Philly is big, no doubt, but you guys really need to put to rest the myth that it's the 3rd largest downtown in the US. None of the stats really add up to prove that claim, whether it's in terms of office space, highrises, or residential population, unless you use the gigantically inflated "extended center city" measurement, which is really just a comparison of apples to oranges when paired up against most other US downtowns, which largely are defined by much more conservative and realistic boundaries (and even with the extended center city definition, center city Philly still would not have the 3rd highest amount of office space in the US, and neither would it have the 3rd largest number of highrises in the US).

Anyways...

I'd say the ranking of the five biggest downtown populations in the US would most likely be:

1. NYC
2. Chicago
3. SF
4. Philadelphia
5. Boston

In terms of office space, the top 5 would be:

1. NYC
2. Chicago
3. Washington DC
4. SF
5. Boston
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Old 05-10-2012, 08:49 PM
 
Location: NYC
2,546 posts, read 3,276,273 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by MDAllstar View Post
How is NOMA where Union Station is not apart of downtown DC? How is the U.S. Capital not the downtown southeastern edge? How is the federal SW complex not the southwest corner of downtown DC?
I don't have a problem with your boundaries except for the northwest one (I'd put that one at Dupont Crcl). And I don't have a problem with you not following standard definitions of downtown but going by the urban character of the area.

My question for you is what boundaries do you use for downtown Chicago then and how did you conclude that downtown DC (including downtown "looking like" areas) is double the size?
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