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So I ask once again, where does transit fit into the discussion? That's as objective a metric as population density.
The one annoying thing about these threads is that people harp on the strengths of the cities they boost and completely ignore the weaknesses. So each thread becomes RaymondChandlerLives calculating the density of taco stands per acre or MDAllStar taking about the square footage of Class A commercial space DC has in the pipeline.
Central Los Angeles is on par with Chicago, Boston and Philadelphia density-wise, but it loses against these cities on transit/walking rates. So I don't see any objective way to rank it above these cities. There's Walkscore, but that doesn't tell us much about actual behavior whereas the Census stats on commuting and car ownership do (even if they are limited).
So the real battle royale comes down to LA and DC. L.A. is denser by a significant margin. But it also has fewer transit riders, walk commuters and bikers than DC by a healthy margin, and has a significantly higher SOV commuting share. It also has a much smaller CBD that's not nearly anywhere as transit-oriented as DC's. Yet nobody's really bothering to weigh the relative strengths and weakness of these places. It's simply "more people equals more urban."
It's an interesting matchup because L.A. is an underperfomer of sorts on more objective metrics. It has neighborhoods that are as dense as Ft. Greene, Bed-Stuy or Crown Heights but function nothing like these neighborhoods. DC, on the flipside, is nowhere as dense as Brooklyn, but has non-auto commuting and car ownership rates that aren't far off from Brooklyn's. It punches above its weight.
Very well stated. I agree, there is no objective measure through use of statistics to gauge actual behavior.
San Francisco clearly is not. Will always be limited with geographic features on all 4 sides. I imagine some Oakland/Berkeley pulled in there. Otherwise it would be 805K for SF using 2010 Census. I don't think Chicago is contiguous either? But could be wrong. Someone earlier questioned the contiguity of that LA number as well. And Boston's doesn't appear to be contiguous either.
Everything is contiguous except for SF, which has some East Bay simply because part of the urban core is across the bay, just like part of the urban core of Boston is across the Harbor and part of the urban core of NY is across the Hudson, Harlem, and East rivers. They are mostly regular shapes too (that is, not gerrymandered) which just happened naturally because the densest areas are generally together
Very well stated. I agree, there is no objective measure through use of statistics to gauge actual behavior.
That's certainly true, and I agree with BajanYankee that when looking at overall "urbanity" (whatever that means) you can't put LA ahead of any of the other second-tier cities except maybe DC. A lot of people, however, seem to deny even that LA is as dense as these other cities, so I'm just providing some clear evidence that it is as dense, if not more urban, as the other cities.
Everything is contiguous except for SF, which has some East Bay simply because part of the urban core is across the bay, just like part of the urban core of Boston is across the Harbor and part of the urban core of NY is across the Hudson, Harlem, and East rivers. They are mostly regular shapes too (that is, not gerrymandered) which just happened naturally because the densest areas are generally together
Yeah, but it's not exactly the same thing. Oakland is further from SF than, say, Newark is from Manhattan. It's a full 10 miles from downtown Oakland to downtown SF. So it isn't "just across the water" like Jersey City is to Manhattan, or Cambridge is to Boston. There's more of a physical and cultural separation; not like strolling across a bridge to Brooklyn or Cambridge or Jersey or Arlington.
Very well stated. I agree, there is no objective measure through use of statistics to gauge actual behavior.
Well, thanks, though that wasn't the exact point I was making. There are some objective ways to evaluate behavior. It might not encompass the full spectrum of human behavior, but there is enough evidence to get a general sense of how a place functions.
Urbanity is largely a matter of perception. Population density *does* play into this perception though a high population density is not always apparent from the street. It's also not apparent from looking at buildings since many people would likely not conclude that Fort Greene and Koreatown have the same population density from just walking around (except for those with X-ray vision who can count all of the people inside of apartments).
That said, I think the way a place is built influences this perception more than anything else. I think the level of pedestrian activity is equally important. And I think transit use and accessibility is a big factor as well. For people who don't dig into data at the Census tract level, which is 99.997% of the American population, that's probably what they're looking at.
Yeah, but it's not exactly the same thing. Oakland is further from SF than, say, Newark is from Manhattan. It's a full 10 miles from downtown Oakland to downtown SF. So it isn't "just across the water" like Jersey City is to Manhattan, or Cambridge is to Boston. There's more of a physical and cultural separation; not like strolling across a bridge to Brooklyn or Cambridge or Jersey or Arlington.
Sure, but it's functionally the same urban system. Oakland from SF is comparable to Newark from NY (and quicker on BART). The urban core of the Bay Area includes both SF and Oakland/Berkeley. I agree it's not the same thing as the other cities but I think it'd be ridiculous to not count the East Bay as part of the SF urban core. There's no strolling across Boston Harbor either but people instinctively include East Boston and Chelsea in the Boston urban core.
Yeah, but it's not exactly the same thing. Oakland is further from SF than, say, Newark is from Manhattan. It's a full 10 miles from downtown Oakland to downtown SF. So it isn't "just across the water" like Jersey City is to Manhattan, or Cambridge is to Boston. There's more of a physical and cultural separation; not like strolling across a bridge to Brooklyn or Cambridge or Jersey or Arlington.
^^^This is true, but it's also not as "far off" and disjointed as people want to make it out to be. It's 2 subway stops away, and functions much like Brooklyn does for Manhattan. It's pretty much already past the "next frontier" phase and is filling up fast with people who desire to move there, some of course who are priced out of SF. A downtown focused on government services and non-profits with some regional secondary offices, and finally new towers going up (much like Brooklyn, except less dense/tall and maybe 15 years behind). Excellent restaurant scene accessible via rail that San Franciscans come into Oakland for. Huge hipster population. Large and rapidly growing gay population.
It's not like most parts of Brooklyn you just pop over the bridge into Manhattan, via walking. The rail connection is far far more important, and as slow as some NYC lines go, it could take just as long to get from inner Brooklyn to where you need to get in Manhattan as it can take to get from Oakland to where you need to get in San Francisco.
Cambridge, to me, is more contiguous with Boston than Brooklyn is with Manhattan. The only difference between Oakland and Brooklyn, in my eyes outside of size/architecture/density and amount of rail connections (obvi), is that the water gap is wider for Oakland than it is for Brooklyn. The relationship that each has with the more central city is pretty close.
That said, I think the way a place is built influences this perception more than anything else. I think the level of pedestrian activity is equally important. And I think transit use and accessibility is a big factor as well. For people who don't dig into data at the Census tract level, which is 99.997% of the American population, that's probably what they're looking at.
I think pedestrian activity is just about the most important factor in determining percieved urbanity, and that makes transit extremely important as well because they're so related. Even an extremely un-urban place like the Las Vegas Strip feels relatively "urban" in a sense because of how crowded the sidewalks are. More often than not density basically aligns with pedestrian activity though, and since there's no statistics for measuring liveliness, i'd say density is the best stand-in we have
Sure, but it's functionally the same urban system. Oakland from SF is comparable to Newark from NY (and quicker on BART). The urban core of the Bay Area includes both SF and Oakland/Berkeley. I agree it's not the same thing as the other cities but I think it'd be ridiculous to not count the East Bay as part of the SF urban core. There's no strolling across Boston Harbor either but people instinctively include East Boston and Chelsea in the Boston urban core.
fair but disjointed calculations with multiple cores can inflate the compressed population or rather add multiple hot spots
The only area in the East Bay that is denser than the outer parts of SF is central Berkeley, and there are similar outer higher-density areas in other cities (e.g. Oxford Circle in Philly or Harvard in Boston). It's counterintuitive to say an area shouldn't be included in a measurement of the central urban core because it is a "hot spot"
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