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Looking at some outer areas of the city, perhaps because of crime, the homes often present nothing but a wall to the street. With the actual entrance requires going through a gate. Appear to be rowhouses or apartments:
Would Boston / Greater Boston be able to stay as structurally dense over a large area such as this?
Cities in the developing world aren't built for the automobile, because most households are too poor to afford them. So you will almost always have higher structural and human density. NYC is really a big outlier in the Americas that it's both wealthy first world and dense over a large area.
And density, by itself, isn't a super-strong proxy for urbanity. I don't find Guadalajara to be in the same class as Boston, and I have been there three times for business, and explored the city extensively. It just isn't that big or particularly urban. Monterrey is actually much less urban than Guadalajara (been there once), and Puebla, while it has a nice historic core, is much smaller than either Guadalajara and Monterrey.
Looking at some outer areas of the city, perhaps because of crime, the homes often present nothing but a wall to the street. With the actual entrance requires going through a gate. Appear to be rowhouses or apartments:
I would say that close to 100% of middle class and higher homes in Mexico are walled in from the street, with a gate. Really the only exceptions are super rural areas (where there are barely any middle class anyways) or planned communities (which are gated and walled as a neighborhood, with security).
The city of Puebla has, on average, tighter and narrower streets all over it's metropolis more so than Boston, I actually feel the need of saying it's not close. Even that original Google Streetview you linked me too, the one that showed some disadvantaged area of Puebla (socioeconomically speaking), had pretty narrow streets. This is true and remains the case even on it's fringes. In that territory.
Maybe this is the problem. Personally, I don't find one-story buildings to be very urban, no matter how tight the street. Especially blocks and blocks of residential one-story buildings.
And also the last sentence is untrue, there are wide streets in Puebla that I came upon in my googling. (like so)
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Yes, my idea of urban goes well beyond the core. See in the United States, you leave the core, you're in some bedroom community of some sort whether it's dense or not, remains to be seen and wholly depends on the city. While this is also true in other countries too..
One thing that Greater Boston does a lot that places like Puebla don't is that, although, yes, there is a certain drop in structural density outside of the "core&Cambridge" area, if you keep going, you'll hit an area where density will increase.
So not only is the city of Boston much more urban than Puebla's historic core (imho), the Greater Boston area is filled with small town centers that are very walkable and high [structural] density; you wouldn't be able to find a place like Salem or New Bedford in Puebla, where the city gradually fades into the desert...
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Look, Boston probably does have a better core but it probably ends there, I think cities in Central America and Mexico definitely are more consistently urban over the larger area than Greater Boston. Which, like I said, in my very first post, is exactly what I was thinking when I listed the places. I somehow forgot Philadelphia though, which I agree, Philadelphia is the only place I would add on to my original list. Apologies in advance for omitting it wrongly.
Again, it depends on how you define "urban".
Based on your definition, you'd consider LA to be more urban than places like San Francisco and Chicago, yes? It is "consistently urban" over a larger area than the other two.
Personally, I wouldn't.
Boston is the third densest city in the US,
and while I think that many Central American cities could make good arguments to be placed above Boston on a list based on urbanity (Panama City, for example), I think it is absolutely ridiculous to say that places like Puebla, Leon, Managua, San Salvador, etc. are more urban than Boston.
For the US, in addition to the East Coast Cities, I would add the older "rust belt" cities, such as Buffalo, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, and Cincinnati. All are very urban within the city limits.
Cities in the developing world aren't built for the automobile, because most households are too poor to afford them. So you will almost always have higher structural and human density. NYC is really a big outlier in the Americas that it's both wealthy first world and dense over a large area.
And density, by itself, isn't a super-strong proxy for urbanity. I don't find Guadalajara to be in the same class as Boston, and I have been there three times for business, and explored the city extensively. It just isn't that big or particularly urban. Monterrey is actually much less urban than Guadalajara (been there once), and Puebla, while it has a nice historic core, is much smaller than either Guadalajara and Monterrey.
It's pretty incredible how urban NYC is over a large area. At least within the NYC city limits, maybe a good 250-300 square miles of NYC is just straight up urban and walkable. No other city in the states comes close and even then, a massive part of the NYC metro is urban. I was shocked to find dense urban walkable suburbs outside of the city itself that looked like they could belong in Brooklyn.
There are really only a few cities that compare around the world with NYC, especially with it's uber dense core of Manhattan(particularly the southern half). Tokyo, Paris, Hong Kong, and a few other select cities....
I was shocked to find dense urban walkable suburbs outside of the city itself that looked like they could belong in Brooklyn.
Yup. Even the denser suburbs of NYC (I'm thinking especially parts of North Jersey) are pretty much as urban as any place in U.S./Canada outside of NYC proper.
Yup. Even the denser suburbs of NYC (I'm thinking especially parts of North Jersey) are pretty much as urban as any place in U.S./Canada outside of NYC proper.
Northern Jersey is a suburb the way Queens is a suburb, which is to say, not at all.
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