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As for Vancouver, yes it's downtown is heavily populated but it's also very deceiving.
Vancouver high rises are VERY thin in order to retain what they call "view corridors". Whether you agree with it or not, it has resulted in many high-rises but with far fewer people living in them than what you would expect from an "average" high-rise of the same number of stories. Vancouver high-rises also top out at about 30 floors unlike Toronto and Montreal.
Some Toronto and Montreal building have twice as many units as a similarly tall Vancouver building. This is to say nothing of the fact that there are thousands of apts & houses in Vancouver that have no one living in them as they were bought by the Chinese for house flipping and passport buying.
As for Vancouver, yes it's downtown is heavily populated but it's also very deceiving.
Vancouver high rises are VERY thin in order to retain what they call "view corridors". Whether you agree with it or not, it has resulted in many high-rises but with far fewer people living in them than what you would expect from an "average" high-rise of the same number of stories. Vancouver high-rises also top out at about 30 floors unlike Toronto and Montreal.
Some Toronto and Montreal building have twice as many units as a similarly tall Vancouver building. This is to say nothing of the fact that there are thousands of apts & houses in Vancouver that have no one living in them as they were bought by the Chinese for house flipping and passport buying.
A lot of truth here. I love Vancouver, which does a lot of things better than just about anywhere. But I wish the towers were wider and closer together, and the podiums were taller, or replaced with more towers. It could be far denser and more urban feeling. It could feel like New York or at least Toronto, instead of a shorter, airy version of Toronto.
One also to remember the major head office cities like NY, Chicago, and Toronto also have huge commercial-only areas. Parts of heavily populated Manhattan have surprisingly small populations but only due to the massive office towers that dominate that one area. That is also true, to a lesser extent, of Chicago and Toronto.
Where? Parts of Midtown Manhattan have a low-ish residential population, but the area of resident-less section isn't that big
One also to remember the major head office cities like NY, Chicago, and Toronto also have huge commercial-only areas. Parts of heavily populated Manhattan have surprisingly small populations but only due to the massive office towers that dominate that one area. That is also true, to a lesser extent, of Chicago and Toronto.
Capitol cities also have this as they may have a very solid urban form but the density may not be high due to the huge areas devoted to government buildings and facilities. This is true in Toronto but not Montreal or Vancouver.
This is very true especially of downtown / Wall Street which is basically dead after office hours.
Battery Park City to the west is the residential portion of lower Manhattan.
It's the same as Toronto or any big financial city where you have a huge financial district. They are packed full of huge commercial buildings but have few people living in them.
One also to remember the major head office cities like NY, Chicago, and Toronto also have huge commercial-only areas. Parts of heavily populated Manhattan have surprisingly small populations but only due to the massive office towers that dominate that one area. That is also true, to a lesser extent, of Chicago and Toronto.
Capitol cities also have this as they may have a very solid urban form but the density may not be high due to the huge areas devoted to government buildings and facilities. This is true in Toronto but not Montreal or Vancouver.
This is a good point but take into account that in the case of Toronto, even though it has a large CBD - it also has in very close proximity and in many cases integrated into the CBD, tons of residential dwellings, many that are condo's. This is why in Toronto's DT - the 6.5 sq miles that has been designated DT by the city, there are now 250,000 residents and counting. More and more projects are mixed where you have a condo and office tower constructed in the same block. The lines between office tower and condo tower or mixed developments are becoming increasingly blurred in DT Toronto, even in the FiDi. In many cases you live in say Ice Condo's or Trump tower and can walk literally across the street to your Office building and place of work.
Chicago is a tale of 2 cities, one a modern success story and the other an ongoing tragedy
The downtown residential areas are booming as fast as anywhere in the country (maybe second to Seattle?) while the overall city and metro are actually flat (or dropping.) The downtown is growing while the crime ridden areas (about 4-8 miles from the Loop) are rapidly losing population.
The "Central Area" is defined as within 2 miles of city hall. This includes the Loop, Near North (to top of Gold Coast), near West Side (mostly West Loop) and South Loop. This pretty closely overlaps with the city's definition of its CBD.
Here is the big takeaway for 2000-2015:
Quote:
The Census Bureau in 2012 reported this area grew faster in the first decade of the century than any downtown in the country, adding 48,000 people. But with an unprecedented construction wave underway, growth has hit the gas, with the area—roughly the Loop, plus the Near North, Near South and Near West sides—growing almost as much in five years as it did in the previous 10.
The area now is home to an estimated 238,259 residents.
So Chicago has added nearly 100K in new CBD population since 2000, which is staggering when compared to the total CBD population of most major US cities.
And this does not include the dense urban areas to the north and west (Lincoln Park, Lakeview/Wrigleyville, Wicker Park, Bucktown etc that are as dense and as urban residential as what most cities would call "downtown." Basically, in Chicago, dense, urban living extends contiguously about 4-5 miles north and West of city hall. In fact, much like Toronto and NYC, it is hard to really tell where urban downtown residential areas stop because they are so extensive.
So I'd put the population of the thriving downtown urban residential areas at closer to 500K. CBD: 240K (Loop, W. Loop, S. Loop, Near North Side.)
Lakeview 100K
Lincoln Park: 65K
Logan Sqr/Bucktown: 75K
West Town: 81K (Wicker Park, Noble, Sqr, Ukrainian Village etc.)
Total:560K
Given Chicago is #2 in highrise cranes (Seattle #1(62), Chicago #2(56) with #3 city only 29), and adding 4-5K rental units a year... with massive future plans being rolled out for new inner core residential development at Goose Island, Cabrini Green (River North) and the 62 acre lot along the river in the South Loop (all 3 areas currently empty and within 2 miles of City Hall)... Chicago continues to add CBD density that should build upon its position as the 2nd biggest dense urban CBD in the USA and arguably on par with Toronto.
But it certainly is a strange dynamic, where the downtown booms with new residents, new major employers and development... while the greater metro area and region overall languishes. While the impoverished areas of the Southside and far Westside (that are also dense urban, but 4-8 miles from the CBD) have lost 180K since 2000... almost exactly balancing out the other population growth of the downtown and metro area. So the metro area has slowly grown to nearly 10M, while the city population has dropped a bit despite the surging downtown population boom. Again, a tale of two cities.
On a related note, annual tourist visits have jumped from 38M to 54M over the past 6 years, which certainly helps growth. But one has to wonder if this is sustainable given all of the bad press the city has received over the past year (which although fair, does not really apply to the downtown areas listed above.)
This is very true especially of downtown / Wall Street which is basically dead after office hours.
Battery Park City to the west is the residential portion of lower Manhattan.
I used to live right by The Financial District in Downtown Manhattan.
The Financial District is very dead after office hours but still very residential. It's because it doesn't have a lot of other things besides office buildings, residential buildings, and lunch places that close early. There really are a lot of residential buildings in the area though, and it's becoming increasingly residential in recent years. Even Wall Street itself is filled with residential highrise buildings.
The only things in FiDi that stay open late for the most part are a few scattered dumpy Irish pubs.
The only area of Manhattan that I can think of where nobody actually lives is Times Square. Midtown, FiDi, and other business centers definitely experience a population drop after office hours but it doesn't mean nobody lives there. It's more so that so many people work there during the day that aren't there at night.
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