Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Those are all good parallels. I don't know that Seattle is more office oriented though...the only clues we have are hugely-flawed and varying brokerage reports, and even then Denver for example is probably similar on a per capita basis.
They're good parallels mostly because they have a house vernacular but a lot of apartment infill which tends to be concentrated in certain districts of each.
Perhaps. But there are plenty of cities that are very neighborhood centric and dense, and some of those are smaller than Seattle. The OP's original post smacked of smugness and an image of his/her city that is just not shared by the majority of responders here. Seattle is a lovely Tier 3 American city but it's no Boston, just like Boston is no NYC. Cities (or residents thereof) that look for confirmation that their city is something more than it is typically are showing their blatant inferiority complex.
Honestly, I don' care. Seattle is the city that it is. I was making a comparison to Boston because of the similar population (metro area) and I really do feel that it's steps ahead of Denver and Minneapolis. But yeah, it might fall somewhere in between and I'm okay with that. The purpose of this thread was to compare its neighborhoods to other cities'.
Status:
"Pickleball-Free American"
(set 1 day ago)
Location: St Simons Island, GA
23,460 posts, read 44,074,708 times
Reputation: 16840
Quote:
Originally Posted by blaserbrad
Honestly, I don' care. Seattle is the city that it is. I was making a comparison to Boston because of the similar population (metro area) and I really do feel that it's steps ahead of Denver and Minneapolis. But yeah, it might fall somewhere in between and I'm okay with that. The purpose of this thread was to compare its neighborhoods to other cities'.
Seattle comes across as a suped-up Minneapolis in many ways. Perhaps like a San Diego, Denver, or Portland with a little bit of injected steroids as well. Definitely a little bit denser than each of those four and far more corporate (hence the far larger office space profile) but in the same general mold as these cities IMO.
Having personally been to Seattle, San Diego, Denver, and Portland I'd say all very good cities IMO. I'm sure Minneapolis is as well. If you're looking for places with the strongest kinship to Seattle, these would be it. Probably would pan out at the neighborhood level as well.
Yep, having been to all four cities (not Minneapolis) I concur that they all are generally similar in scale and layout. All with somewhat compact downtowns, bounded by historically mostly SFH neighborhoods that are densifying with new developments and each with established "little downtowns" with historic, built-up corridors and then somewhat sprawling suburbs with newer developments and business parks that bring up the population count without any of those cities feeling particularly large, although Seattle definitely feels larger than the other three.
I am pretty familiar with some of the Seattle neighborhoods listed,
As a San Diego to Seattle comparison, and these are roughly, I would say Fremont:North Park, Capitol Hill:Hillcrest, Lower Queen Anne:Bankers Hill, and Ballard:South Park (my hood, although it is much smaller and closer to downtown, it has a very similar vibe)
Honestly, I don' care. Seattle is the city that it is. I was making a comparison to Boston because of the similar population (metro area) and I really do feel that it's steps ahead of Denver and Minneapolis. But yeah, it might fall somewhere in between and I'm okay with that. The purpose of this thread was to compare its neighborhoods to other cities'.
I can't really even follow what is going on in this thread, much less deal with the passive-aggressive, "if you don't respond to me in exactly the way I like about an incredibly nebulous topic, you should just take your proverbial ball and go home" tone of it.
All of that said Boston, which the US Census Bureau says had a 2016 metro population of 4,732,161 versus Seattle which had a 2016 metro population of 3,798,902, clearly aren't in the same size class (unless you consider a 20% difference a "rounding error" - I don't).
I think I'll head over to the Naples FL vs. Naples Italy thread which, while moronic, is clearly more fun than this. Cheers!
When it comes to flawed measures, MSA is the most flawed. They omit close-in areas for one city and include complete wilderness in another. Seattle's for example includes nearly all of Mt. Rainier National Park. It's all based on county lines....does San Bernadino really go all the way to Nevada?
The Boston population comparison falls short because:
-Boston has the same city population in 50% the area as Seattle... so twice as dense.
-Boston metro has 1 million more people in about 55% the area as Seattle metro... so again twice as dense
It shows how city, metro and CSA pops can be a bit misleading because they don't tell you density. And to make it even more confusion, you have the fact that water included can throw off the density numbers.
Yep, having been to all four cities (not Minneapolis) I concur that they all are generally similar in scale and layout. All with somewhat compact downtowns, bounded by historically mostly SFH neighborhoods that are densifying with new developments and each with established "little downtowns" with historic, built-up corridors and then somewhat sprawling suburbs with newer developments and business parks that bring up the population count without any of those cities feeling particularly large, although Seattle definitely feels larger than the other three.
I am pretty familiar with some of the Seattle neighborhoods listed,
As a San Diego to Seattle comparison, and these are roughly, I would say Fremont:North Park, Capitol Hill:Hillcrest, Lower Queen Anne:Bankers Hill, and Ballard:South Park (my hood, although it is much smaller and closer to downtown, it has a very similar vibe)
I would probably say that Portland is built the most differently amongst the 5 (Denver, Minneapolis, Portland, San Diego, and Seattle). Portland at ground level comes across as more closely knit, much tighter, and more human scaled with better transitions from CBD to the surrounding areas such as the Pearl District and other spots.
However, aside from that, it is very much comparable and very much a peer of the other four. These cities more or less grew up and are still growing up together. They are all in the same population bracket and range, above 3 million and below 5 million, with sustainable to high population growth in the interim period. They share challenges and share likeminded offerings. The type of people these cities attract are typically well educated, pretty literate (can read, speak, write well), highly productive, and at times passive. All five are pretty millennial friendly cities, which reflects in the designs of their infill structures. Lots of breweries, outdoorsy culture, book stores, coffee outlets, and likely a hella lot of REI shoppers and Subaru drivers. All of their main colleges and universities are public ones.
I'll do 25 a set.
Minneapolis, United States (Greater Minneapolis/Saint Paul):
I can't really speak for others but I can for myself. The appeal to these cities is derived from their ability to provide a relatively safe, prosperous, high-productivity, well educated, well literate, outdoors friendly, versatile, and stable environment with regard to social mobility and potential income. All are cities that have embraced the Knowledge Economy and are among the leaders, from a productivity standpoint, in several of those industries. All of these aspects enhance their standard quality of life and I suspect that all five would be towards the tip top in the United States in that regard (along with some other cities as well like Honolulu, Austin, Madison, Salt Lake City, so on). These commonalities tend to spill over into the neighborhoods of these cities and because likeminded individuals want generally the same things, you'll see a lot of commonalities between all five of these. They also represent cities with robust trajectories and health. This is why they appeal to me among places in the United States, now I like some other places in the United States as well but these five would undoubtedly be somewhere well within my list of places in North America and America as a whole. While I only speak for myself with my comments, I'm sure there are others out there that have a liking for these five cities as well. Fundamentally their flaw, as a collective five, stems from not being true big cities (i.e. a megacity or even just a massive near-mega sort of city and/or big cities with intense urban fabric and both structural and high population density). I suspect that aside from megacity status and feel, they will all grow into the next most accommodating tier of large American cities, despite being medium to high medium sized right now (none are above 5 million in their metropolis). In the meantime, when accounting for the present moment, that flaw of not being a super huge and intensely built-up megacity, in my view, is not a flaw at all. It makes these cities, generally speaking, far more manageable and organized than their much larger and much more urban counterparts. So there are beneficial tradeoffs to the whole ordeal after all.
Last edited by Trafalgar Law; 08-23-2017 at 05:43 PM..
More like 8,350 (2016 est) vs. 13,300 (2013 est). A big difference but not double.
Also, a Boston-sized area in the center and upper middle of Seattle would be in the 10,000 range.
Of 2016 Boston has a density of 13,930.
If you cherry picked a Boston sized area in the core of Boston it would be close to 20,000ppsm.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
