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Please tell us what’s biased about SF almost universally being ranked number 2 after NYC?
Tell us what’s biased about DC building more housing units inside its 61 sq mi boarders than LA does inside it 468 sq mi and the domino effect that has on its urbanity with height limits?
Tell us what’s biased about Boston & Philly having substantially more built up cores than downtown than LA despite LA having the higher population density at parity?
Tell us what’s biased about Seattle being less urban than Baltimore when the cities still have near identical 1-2 mile population radius's in 2020 after the former has lost well over +30% of its pop and still retains much of its historic housing stock?
You do realize that had the car not been invented in 1884 (36 years after LA was created for context) virtually every American city would have looked like the east coast?
This is coming from a person who lives in SD which in look & form is 1/4th scale LA
That is just fundamentally not true. The difference between cities built mostly from 1800-1875 look very different than cities built mostly from 1875-1930.
Lowell, Massachusetts has more people living in 20,000+ ppsm census tracks than Cleveland. Despite the latter being much larger. Because Streetcars changed how cities were built as much as cars did. living on 1/4 acre lot SFH became doable when streetcars allowed people to live 3-4 miles from work instead of the 1-1.5 mile walking limit early American mill towns like Lowell or Lawrence did.
Tell us what’s biased about Seattle being less urban than Baltimore when the cities still have near identical 1-2 mile population radius's in 2020 after the former has lost well over +30% of its pop and still retains much of its historic housing stock?
Urbanity controversies aside, Seattle is way more vibrant than Baltimore. Being the largest city in the Pacific Northwest and Alaska, it’s also more regionally important while Baltimore is heavily overshadowed by DC. That’s something that urban bones or raw density numbers do not easily capture in terms of how a city anchors a region and the quality of the urbanity.
Urbanity controversies aside, Seattle is way more vibrant than Baltimore. Being essentially the largest city in the Pacific Northwest and Alaska, it’s also more regionally important while Baltimore is heavily overshadowed by DC. That’s something that urban bones or raw density numbers do not easily capture.
No one is arguing or contesting those merits, but this thread is about which are the most urban cities not which is most vibrant.
Please tell us what’s biased about SF almost universally being ranked number 2 after NYC?
Tell us what’s biased about DC building more housing units inside its 61 sq mi boarders than LA does inside it 468 sq mi and the domino effect that has on its urbanity with height limits?
Tell us what’s biased about Boston & Philly having substantially more built up cores than downtown than LA despite LA having the higher population density at parity?
Tell us what’s biased about Seattle being less urban than Baltimore when the cities still have near identical 1-2 mile population radius's in 2020 after the former has lost well over +30% of its pop and still retains much of its historic housing stock?
You do realize that had the car not been invented in 1884 (36 years after LA was created for context) virtually every American city would have looked like the east coast?
This is coming from a person who lives in SD which in look & form is 1/4th scale LA
If you want to be impressed by a place that can maintain structural/population density across a swath of land that you can practically throw a frisbee across, go ahead. To each their own.
If you want some good comedy go back through those threads where San Francisco gets ranked number 2 and look at how the people voting for SF answer questions about how it would warrant such a high ranking. How many hundreds of times have you heard SF analogized to "Manhattan?" East coast bias.
What D.C. does have: A wholly residential area with nothing but housing that makes up a signficant chunk of their city limits.
What D.C. does not have: A single skyscraper in their entire metropolitan area.
If the car had not been invented, the streetcar probably would have, which is where cities in Southern California derive their urban form from, not cars as 99.9% of the general public believes.
The city had a massive multi-decade “white flight” post war due to manufacturing going belly up.
Really? Baltimore peaked at 950,000 people in 1950. You have to figure that without any additional housing added that they would lose at least 20%. Look at Hoboken. It's added a ton of housing and is still down almost 20% from its peak. Boston is down 10% from its peak and I think that they have more housing now as well.
No one is arguing or contesting those merits, but this thread is about which are the most urban cities not which is most vibrant.
I use the word "amenities", which among other things includes places that could be considered vibrant. Having access to restaurants and entertainment is very much part of being urban imo.
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