Top 10 most urban contiguous 50 sq miles (people, Boston, Chicago, cons)

[Calisonn]

List the top 10 most urban 50 square miles in order.

IMO:

1. NYC
2. Chicago
3. Philadelphia
4. SF
5. LA
6. DC
7. Boston
8. Baltimore
9. Miami
10. Denver

[newgensandiego]

Originally Posted by Calisonn

List the top 10 most urban 50 square miles in order.

IMO:

1. NYC
2. Chicago
3. Philadelphia
4. SF
5. LA
6. DC
7. Boston
8. Baltimore
9. Miami
10. Denver

This one is tough. I think San Diego might be higher density based on census tract data, although I think Denver is arguably more urban. That was just based on a quick reference to WalkScore.

I think Boston is likely more urban than DC. I'm not even sure what to think about Baltimore...so many abandoned areas.

Also, where is Seattle? Surely #8 at least...

[OyCrumbler]

Rank by most urban 50 contiguous square miles without a massive amount of "gerrymandering"

1. NYC
2. Chicago
3. San Francisco
4. Philadelphia
5. LA
6. Boston
7. DC
8. Seattle
9. Baltimore
10. Miami

I feel like most lists would be some variation of this one. OP's inclusion of Denver seems odd to me.

[BostonBornMassMade]

Originally Posted by OyCrumbler

Rank by most urban 50 contiguous square miles without a massive amount of "gerrymandering"

1. NYC
2. Chicago
3. San Francisco
4. Philadelphia
5. LA
6. Boston
7. DC
8. Seattle
9. Baltimore
10. Miami

I feel like most lists would be some variation of this one. OP's inclusion of Denver seems odd to me.

Switch Seattle and Baltimore?

[Natural510]

I would think there would be actual data on density which could make this a fact-based (not opinion poll) thread...

[BostonBornMassMade]

Originally Posted by Natural510

I would think there would be actual data on density which could make this a fact-based (not opinion poll) thread...

Kinda hard to get the 50 densest square miles of a metro.

I think objectively off data it’d be this

NYC
CHICAGO
SF
LA
PHILLY
BOSTON
DC
SEATTLE
MIAMI
BALTIMORE

Boston and Philly might be tied.

Baltimore loses out because of the abandonment but the actual built environment is extremely dense.

[kimumingyu]

Wouldn't there be various 50 sq mile tracts in surrounding areas of NYC, SF, etc.? I would guess the areas around Hoboken, Jersey City, Newark, etc. would make a denser area than, say, Seattle.

[TheTimidBlueBars]

Cities with a lot of water are probably disadvantaged here, because there can be a dense suburban area across a body of water (Jersey City, Arlington VA, Oakland), but you might not be able to jump straight from the main urban core across the river to pick up those square miles. Depends how big the population units are, I guess --- if we're using census tracts, there might be some tracts on the shore that contain a lot of water but are still over 10,000 ppsm (or whatever) because the land area is so dense.

Seattle is treated especially unfairly here --- you definitely could not "jump" across Lake Washington to pick up downtown Bellevue using census tracts, it's too wide, and you also wouldn't be able to snag West Seattle because it's cut off from the rest of the city by industrial areas where almost no one lives.

In cities like Chicago, the densest contiguous 50 sq mi are more reflective of the metro's actual density.

[BigCity76]

Originally Posted by TheTimidBlueBars

Cities with a lot of water are probably disadvantaged here, because there can be a dense suburban area across a body of water (Jersey City, Arlington VA, Oakland), but you might not be able to jump straight from the main urban core across the river to pick up those square miles. Depends how big the population units are, I guess --- if we're using census tracts, there might be some tracts on the shore that contain a lot of water but are still over 10,000 ppsm (or whatever) because the land area is so dense.

Seattle is treated especially unfairly here --- you definitely could not "jump" across Lake Washington to pick up downtown Bellevue using census tracts, it's too wide, and you also wouldn't be able to snag West Seattle because it's cut off from the rest of the city by industrial areas where almost no one lives.

In cities like Chicago, the densest contiguous 50 sq mi are more reflective of the metro's actual density.

Even if you jump straight across the water JC is as densely populated as it gets and it's definitely not suburban. You have to go about 10 miles north of JC to get dense suburban areas directly across the water from NYC. But in the case of Jersey City you can easily jump straight across to pick up these contiguous urban square miles and from there it goes on and on into a mass of urbanity.

[rnc2mbfl]

This is an interesting question because 50 square miles of urban is a lot of urban. Manhattan isn't even half of that land area. Also, places like San Francisco aren't completely urban (though no doubt there's people who think that it is). Here are some examples:
https://www.google.com/maps/@37.7239...7i16384!8i8192
https://www.google.com/maps/@37.7478...7i16384!8i8192

Density alone can't be the metric for this conversation either because a nice density metric can be had with the sort of tightly packed suburbia one sees in California and other metro areas where they are constricted by geography, water supply, or both.

For me, I'd have to do a lot of analysis to go beyond the obvious first few of NYC, Chicago, Philly & SF.