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Now moving on to squash this whole "Philly" is sooo much larger (lest we forget the trivial fact that SF is at the tip of a peninsula and cannot possibly be both geographically larger AND contiguous, given its natural boundaries of water on 3 sides and mountains to the south).
Despite the fact that Oakland is a whopping ~4 miles away over water (nevermind that its CBD is directly connected to SF's via 12 lanes of bridge and 4 heavy rail lines carrying hundreds of thousands of people a day), if the Bay Area were once like Pangea, then at one point SF was directly connected by land to the following cities:
San Francisco - 825,111 - 46.87 sq mi - 17,604 ppsm
Oakland - 400,740 - 55.786 sq mi - 7,184 ppsm
Berkeley - 112,580 - 10.47 sq mi - 10,753 ppsm
Daly City (actually still connected) - 101,123 - 7.664 sq mi - 13,195 ppsm
Alameda - 73,812 - 10.611 sq mi - 6,956 ppsm
South SF (actually still connected) - 64,409 - 9.141 sq mi - 7,046 ppsm
Emeryville - 10,080 - 1.246 sq mi - 8,090 ppsm
TOTAL - 1,587,855 - 141.788 sq mi - 11,199 ppsm
Philadelphia - 1,526,006 - 134.1 sq mi - 11,380 ppsm
So all in all, it would appear that figurative "contiguous" San Francisco and Philadelphia are virtual equals, and that if SF were geographically centered like Philadelphia, then it could have a similar population over a similar area with a similar density.
If one wants to discuss the remainder of each city's metro, subjectively the Bay Area is like friggin Manhattan compared to metro Philly, which is literally has vast countryside. The Delaware Valley has about 7.1 million people whereas the Bay Area has 8.4 million. 1.3 million people is a material difference, that's an 18% difference.
Not to mention that in terms of Urban Areas, SF-Oakland is 2nd densest behind LA, and San Jose is 3rd.
Urban Area:
Philadelphia - 5,441,567 - 1,981.4 sq mi - 2,746.3 ppsm
SF-Oakland - 3,281,212 - 523.6 sq mi - 6,266.6 ppsm
San Jose - 1,664,496 - 286.0 sq mi - 5,819.9 ppsm
Concord (in Contra Costa County, which is part of SF-Oakland MSA and connects) - 615,968 - 203.8 sq mi - 3,022.4 ppsm
TOTAL SF Urban Area - 5,561,676 - 1,013.4 sq mi - 5,488.1 ppsm
The final argument that Philadelphia posters give is that Philadelphia is somehow really only 70-90 square miles of land due to an oil refinery, industrial land, shipyards, etc. Of course as if SF city limits don't contain all the same things, LoL.
Now, according to Trust For Public Land, SF has 18.0% parkland and Philadelphia only has 12.9%. Philadelphia has a shipyard, but being that SF is ON THE OCEAN AND ON A DEEPWATER BAY, and being that Bay Area (port of SF, Alameda, Richmond) was the largest naval port and shipyards in the country during WWII (the 1940s is *really* when SF and the Bay Area exploded with population for anyone who cares to research), I'd be willing to bet that SF has more land taken up by shipyards than Philadelphia. Philly does have that Sunoco refinery (North/East Bay area has about 5 refineries of that size, just saying), but SF has an entire wasteland called Mission Bay that is finally being built on like you wouldn't believe. SF city limits also has far more office space than Philadelphia City limits, and being that SF is seriously smaller as we've all agreed, that means a much higher % of the city is taken up by office/commercial.
And so what if Philly has industrial wasteland (and failing to realize SF does too). SF has friggin mountains in its city limits. SF City has four (4) peaks over 900 ft in the middle of its city limits. Another seven (7) between 600-900 ft. Sorry, but that's far more of an obstacle to development than Philly could possibly have. (Duh?)
Overall, I think saying that 50% of Philadelphia's land area is undeveloped or undevelopable so that the city's density is really "20,000" ppsm is a CRAP argument. Take out the PROVEN 18% of SF's land area from parkspace, and you get 21,469 pppsm in remaining land, not to mention the "shipyards" we have discussed, the office space, the tall/steep hills that aren't counted as parkspace, the industrial wastelands which characterize much of the eastern/southern part of SF city, etc etc. Philly will NEVER be as dense as SF no matter how much land City-Data posters say is not developed on. It's a BUNK argument!
And for the final jab, SF is projected to add 150,000+ more residents by 2030, which will equate to a density of about 21,000 ppsm on all land area (on par with Brooklyn), 25,000 ppsm if you take out the 18% parkland. What is Philly projected to add (or lose??)
lmao! You sound exactly like that poster from another thread that was trying to combine nearby satellite cities for Washington DC to boost it against only the Philly city proper. I don't see how anyone who has been to both cities can honestly say that San Francisco feel like the larger city. Sure their downtown areas are very comparable but that's not the end all of everything when it comes to which city feels larger. As far as your urban area comparison, if your going to include places like San Jose and Concord to San Francisco then Philly should get Vineland, Trenton, Reading, and probably New York City(as their urban areas are very close to combining).
1. Oakland is akin to University City or Camden, just larger and with more water separating it from SF proper. It's often compared to the "Brooklyn" of SF for many reasons mainly having to do with how Oakland relates to SF in similar fashion to how Brooklyn relates to Manhattan, the *only* largest and most significant difference to Brooklyn, Camden, Cambridge, University City, etc is distance to main city across water. So Brooklyn only needs bridge spans of half a mile and Oakland needs two bridge spans of a couple miles each. Berkeley, Emeryville, and Alameda are all immediately adjacent to Oakland and directly across from SF and have become migration points for those priced out of SF (similarly to Oakland). Daly City and South SF directly border SF, so why wouldn't one be able to figuratively combine those two small cities with SF to demonstrate that Philly's larger land area is merely comparable to what could all be ONE city of SF.
If you excluded East Bay cities (Oakland, Alameda, Berkeley, Emeryville), and simply included Daly City and South SF since they border SF, then SF would have 990,643 people in 63.675 sq mi (15,557.8 ppsm over basically 1,000,000 people).
I wouldn't say my combination is remotely anything like combining satellite suburban nodes of DC to the District.
2. Fine, then find a way to break out Trenton NJ, Vineland, and Reading PA and include them in Philly's Urban Area - it won't make "Urban Philly" that much larger than Urban SF and it will only serve to further dilute the population density.
3. The urban landscape between SF and SJ (the greatest "distance" between 2 urban centers in the Bay Area) is more akin to the urban landscape between LA and Santa Monica or Miami and West Palm Beach or Dallas and Fort Worth or Minneapolis and Saint Paul. The connection between Philly and NYC is there, but over that much more immense distance, the urban landscape really drops off and the connection is not nearly the same. I have family in Princeton NJ, and even more in Philly (my family in Princeton will argue they're closer to NYC culturally and geographically), so I get it...there's a pull in both directions and Jersey's an urban state, but it's still not the same.
Most people will uniformly make the case for SF + SJ, especially given that not too long ago they were the same MSA after all, (and lots of people categorize SF and Oakland as being brothers/sisters from anotha motha), whereas few people outside of Philly/Jersey will make the case for Trenton + Philly (lots of people probably don't even know what Trenton is given the state of education in the US, heh).
It seems that some of our friends from Philly forgot that we've already gone over the density over an extended area question ad nauseum, several times. Oh well, it's fun I suppose.
The bottom line is, The Bay Area's density is considerably more spread out over a larger area than Philadelphia, which sees a huge drop off literally as soon as you leave their city limits.
Maps below were made for other threads by me where this issue has been discussed.
I don't even know anywhere on the East Coast except NY that might have as far reaching continuous land mass of 10,000+ppsm as Oakland does. 18 miles from Albany to San Leandro. http://i107.photobucket.com/albums/m...g?t=1312299777
Here's a map I did for a previous thread, Philly's cluster, not seen here, is about the same size as DC. The Bay Area is considerably larger in this regard than Philadelphia, Boston and DC. They all seem kind of small actually by comparison, if the measuring stick is continuous density of 5,000+ppsm. http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8247/8...01e0e099_b.jpg
Baltimore-DC are far less dense than SF-SJ, it's not even close, Philadelphia is much smaller in this sense than the Bay, which due to tight land restrictions(hills and water) extends it's population farther out on narrow slivers of land. That is a formula for very high density over a wide area. http://img577.imageshack.us/img577/2048/5000phisfdc.jpg
The final argument that Philadelphia posters give is that Philadelphia is somehow really only 70-90 square miles of land due to an oil refinery, industrial land, shipyards, etc. Of course as if SF city limits don't contain all the same things, LoL.
Now, according to Trust For Public Land, SF has 18.0% parkland and Philadelphia only has 12.9%. Philadelphia has a shipyard, but being that SF is ON THE OCEAN AND ON A DEEPWATER BAY, and being that Bay Area (port of SF, Alameda, Richmond) was the largest naval port and shipyards in the country during WWII (the 1940s is *really* when SF and the Bay Area exploded with population for anyone who cares to research), I'd be willing to bet that SF has more land taken up by shipyards than Philadelphia. Philly does have that Sunoco refinery (North/East Bay area has about 5 refineries of that size, just saying), but SF has an entire wasteland called Mission Bay that is finally being built on like you wouldn't believe. SF city limits also has far more office space than Philadelphia City limits, and being that SF is seriously smaller as we've all agreed, that means a much higher % of the city is taken up by office/commercial.
And so what if Philly has industrial wasteland (and failing to realize SF does too). SF has friggin mountains in its city limits. SF City has four (4) peaks over 900 ft in the middle of its city limits. Another seven (7) between 600-900 ft. Sorry, but that's far more of an obstacle to development than Philly could possibly have. (Duh?)
Overall, I think saying that 50% of Philadelphia's land area is undeveloped or undevelopable so that the city's density is really "20,000" ppsm is a CRAP argument. Take out the PROVEN 18% of SF's land area from parkspace, and you get 21,469 pppsm in remaining land, not to mention the "shipyards" we have discussed, the office space, the tall/steep hills that aren't counted as parkspace, the industrial wastelands which characterize much of the eastern/southern part of SF city, etc etc. Philly will NEVER be as dense as SF no matter how much land City-Data posters say is not developed on. It's a BUNK argument!
And for the final jab, SF is projected to add 150,000+ more residents by 2030, which will equate to a density of about 21,000 ppsm on all land area (on par with Brooklyn), 25,000 ppsm if you take out the 18% parkland. What is Philly projected to add (or lose??)
So I think we've settled this. Numbers don't lie.
Actually in the core 49 sq miles Philly achieves 1 million
In terms of undevelopable land - I suggested 50 sq miles including the ports, refineries, airports (remember SFO is not in SF proper and Philly has two)
Also on your added arreas, the one thing you did not do was add areas outside Philly that extend with 10K ppsm density to about 200 sq miles. We have done these calculations quite frequently
On your population estimates
A recent estimate was 2.1 million by 2040 - or adding ~450K close to its peak in 1950 - Philly has been growing now for about ten years after years of decline - not sure it will get there but will also likely continue to grow
Both are urban and I agree tht SF can fel more urban in the core - depending on where you set the barometer Philly can and is larger - but again it depends on the metric
Last edited by kidphilly; 10-23-2013 at 09:17 AM..
^^^A) nobody's counting SFO (a whole 11 miles south of the city) in the city limits of SF.
B) Again, I posted a ton of links and took actual data, you have failed to do so, so as far as I or anybody else is concerned you're sticking your finger in the air and determining which direction the breeze is coming from. Your comments are meaningless - "core 49 sq miles?" If that's a thing, then someone's got actual data on it - please post.
You keep talking about all this stuff as if Philly is in some unique position of having so much undeveloped/undevelopable land, well boohoo cry me a river. As I already posted, the FACT is that SF has 18% parkspace and Philly as 12.9% (link from TPL already posted above).
According to Facts from PHL's website, PHL has 2,370 acres, which is 3.7 sq mi (2.7% of Philly land area). According to THIS source, the international terminal and western end of airfield are in Tinicum Township, Delaware County, PA. Assuuming the other air field in Philly is smaller than PHL, let's say 3% of Philly air fields are in the city of Philadelphia - so 16% off limits so far - still smaller than the 18% just taken up by park space in SF.
[702 acres in one brownfield alone in this picture - 1.1 sq mi (2.35% of SF land area - similar to PHL in Philly IF it were all indeed in Philly city limits)]
SF has more of its even smaller space taken up by more office space and more hotels and more retail. See below for office space.
(73.5 million sf in SF according to THIS vs 41.8 million sf in Philadelphia according to THIS report).
Anyway, UNLIKE Philly, SF IS growing quite rapidly due to an actual economic boom (caused by the Bay Area's very important homegrown economy of tech...what kind of economy does Philly have where it can snap its fingers and add the 450K people it seems to think it will all of a sudden attract after most of a century of population decline), so the above pictures are outdated. Construction cranes are up and SF's industrial waterfront is basically one of the largest construction zones in the country, similar to South Boston/Seaport District (Innovation District) there. Two cities with real important and growing 21st century economies attracting more office users and Millennial renters.
Let me know if you want me to pull public data about retail GLA and hotel rooms, I've already pulled numbers for tourists/visitors, airport traffic, etc. This all takes away from residential, but adds to the "big city feel" this thread is about.
Again, people, can we ban posting without data support? Conjecture is stupid, especially coming from ill informed kids.
Last edited by JMT; 10-24-2013 at 06:22 PM..
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from Albany to San Leandro.
