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They are one continuous urban area based on the US census (but have been kept separate) but are kept separate which makes sense; though the dynamic isn't all that different from DC/Balt
I think the IE should be combined with LA and the inner bay most definitely should be one; where the bay gets crazy is some of the outer counties in the CSA but the MSA is a mistake IMHO by not combining the core counties of SJ and SF.
Chicago is a larger place urban or whatever than either DC or SF; it just is
It's actually not that corresponding. Here's the calculation of density of those urban areas for 2017. With the below, you can compare to what the MSA is and look at rough percentage of an MSA that could be urban.
Very interesting, a historical trend would be nice as well.
The Southwestern cities often associated with endless sprawl, and despite not having a super dense urban cores, do have denser urban areas than many of the biggest cities in the Midwest and Northeast. Vegas, Salt Lake, Denver, Riverside, and Phoenix have denser urban areas than Boston, Philadelphia, Seattle, Baltimore, and Detroit. All but Phoenix are also denser than Chicago and DC as well.
Very interesting, a historical trend would be nice as well.
The Southwestern cities often associated with endless sprawl, and despite not having a super dense urban cores, do have denser urban areas than many of the biggest cities in the Midwest and Northeast. Vegas, Salt Lake, Denver, Riverside, and Phoenix have denser urban areas than Boston, Philadelphia, Seattle, Baltimore, and Detroit. All but Phoenix are also denser than Chicago and DC as well.
These areas are absolutely sprawling. The thing is that the sprawl isn't necessarily un-dense. It's maintained over sizable areas. Of course, there's a lot more to urbanity than merely density. Having a dense area doesn't mean it's walkable and having an undense area doesn't mean it's not walkable automatically.
This is not exact since UA and MSA are separate entities, but this is roughly the percentage of each MSA that might be considered "Urban" by population
37. San Francisco MSA: 75.34%
I understand your point but as I eluded to earlier, due to geographic constraints(steep hillsides, water) the San Francisco MSA is divided into 4 Urban Areas.
2017 5-Year Population Estimate:
3,497,079 San Francisco-Oakland, CA UA 6,678 ppsm
660,313 Concord, CA Urban Area 3,251 ppsm
302,511 Antioch, CA Urban Area 3,738 ppsm
88,098 Livermore, CA Urban Area 2,727 ppsm
Salt Lake City, in absolute terms Sprawls the least, San Francisco area as well as LA probably have some of the higher urban area densities in the U.S.
A great thing about urban areas is that they compare well across countries, but they do tend to fail in extremely dense areas. For example Boston to some extent is extended by the general density of New England do to historical settlement being far more dense in village density than most of the U.S
Modcut: North America only
Then you and I have different definitions of sprawl. To me sprawl doesn't mean size, which is the only metric that would indicate that Salt Lake City has the least sprawl. I interpret sprawl to mean the area that it takes to fit all of the stuff and people in your metro on average. The more area it takes per person, the more sprawl there is. And I can't wrap my brain around how that is different than population density.
That said I do see differences in sprawl. LA for example sprawls on and on at a relative high and contiguous density even near the outskirts. Compare that to NYC where the outskirts are more often small towns with noticeable population gaps between towns. Many might not consider that to be sprawl because it is beyond the urban/city area and it looks noticeably different. It's the high density suburban sprawl that many dislike. But then you see similar low density sprawl in much of the sunbelt and they don't like that either.
They are one continuous urban area based on the US census (but have been kept separate) but are kept separate which makes sense; though the dynamic isn't all that different from DC/Balt
I think the IE should be combined with LA and the inner bay most definitely should be one; where the bay gets crazy is some of the outer counties in the CSA but the MSA is a mistake IMHO by not combining the core counties of SJ and SF.
Chicago is a larger place urban or whatever than either DC or SF; it just is
It makes sense on some level for NYC and Philadelphia to be separate though Demographia seems to places less weight on historic separations than the US census’s designations. The NJ counties between Philadelphia and New York are all increasing in population and work on a stretch of track to be able to run somewhat faster trains on the line connecting the two is supposed to finish this year, so maybe it’s about time for Demographia to merge the two.
I understand your point but as I eluded to earlier, due to geographic constraints(steep hillsides, water) the San Francisco MSA is divided into 4 Urban Areas.
2017 5-Year Population Estimate:
3,497,079 San Francisco-Oakland, CA UA 6,678 ppsm
660,313 Concord, CA Urban Area 3,251 ppsm
302,511 Antioch, CA Urban Area 3,738 ppsm
88,098 Livermore, CA Urban Area 2,727 ppsm
These 4 UAs account for 97.9% of the MSA
The areas (in square miles) are based off of land area - water is not included in that, so we can throw that suggestion out instantly as it's already taken care of. As far as steep hillsides go - well San Francisco definitely has that covered as it has many residences on steep hills. Not sure why that's something we'd have to taken into account. San Francisco is one of the hilliest cities in the world, but it's already well inhabited on those hills. It's not like nobody's living on the hills in the area. If anything, the constraint should be uninhabitable park land in metro areas which would apply to every metro area.
As far as steep hillsides go - well San Francisco definitely has that covered as it has many residences on steep hills. Certainly not the only place with geographic constraints either - so we can't just change it for SF and nowhere else.
Okay you dont need to revise your list because it's accurate in that it's the percentage of people in an MSA that live in the largest Urban Area in that MSA.,
Im simply pointing out that aside from the SF-Oakland UA, 1.050 Million people in the SF MSA live in other Urban Areas whose population densities are very high by UA standards.
Also, just perusing the list, the Concord UA at 660,000 people, is the largest secondary UA of an MSA in the country, approximately the same size as the Fresno UA.
The areas (in square miles) are based off of land area - water is not included in that, so we can throw that suggestion out instantly as it's already taken care of. As far as steep hillsides go - well San Francisco definitely has that covered as it has many residences on steep hills. Not sure why that's something we'd have to taken into account. San Francisco is one of the hilliest cities in the world, but it's already well inhabited on those hills. It's not like nobody's living on the hills in the area. If anything, the constraint should be uninhabitable park land in metro areas which would apply to every metro area.
The SF metro though has lots of hills that few or sometimes no one can inhabit. That does bias density lower. But in the specific case of SF, the hills bias density higher. For example, if SF were really 7 miles by 7 miles and completely flat, then the total land surface area would be 49 square miles. But you start adding in hills and the the land area increases by quite a bit. I don't know by how much but my WAG is that the true land surface area of SF maybe 2-3 square miles more than the two dimensional area. Many other cities would have the same bias, but few to the extent of SF.
Okay you dont need to revise your list because it's accurate in that it's the percentage of people in an MSA that live in the largest Urban Area in that MSA.,
Im simply pointing out that aside from the SF-Oakland UA, 1.050 Million people in the SF MSA live in other Urban Areas whose population densities are very high by UA standards.
Also, just perusing the list, the Concord UA at 660,000 people, is the largest secondary UA of an MSA in the country, approximately the same size as the Fresno UA.
Interesting. It almost makes looking at urban area irrelevant for the Bay Area.
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