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The only American municipal that exceeds Paris is Manhattan. That being said Athens, Greece is just as dense as Paris with 670k living in 15 sq/mi, granted the density drops off a lot once the surrounding Greater Athens is including with "only" 3.2million in 159 sq/mi
Outside NYC, European cities as a whole are usually significantly denser than their American counterparts
Birmingham, Manchester, Frankfurt, Munich, Hamburg, even Rome are not significantly denser than the likes of Boston, Washington, Philadelphia, and the more urban crop of American cities.
Yes, Chicago has a much bigger and better skyline. But all that mid- and low-rise you see in your satellite photo of SF is extremely dense, urban, and tightly knit. And many would consider that to be part of SF’s core. SF’s Financial District pales in comparison to The Loop but in terms of what most would consider to be Downtown SF (basically the entire Northeast quadrant of the city) it’s not that much smaller than Chicago’s downtown. Chicago’s is bigger, but it is not on a different scale.
And more importantly as others have pointed out comparing those Downtowns SF has more crowded sidewalks, narrower streets and denser infrastructure. You could definitely make the case that SF has a more classically urban downtown/inner neighborhoods than Chicago (less “grand” and tall, but more urban in many respects).
However, the reason I’d ultimately say Chicago is more urban is that SF is only 49 square miles, while Chicago is huge. Even though some parts of Chicago are a bit more suburban, overall it cumulatively has much more urban area to explore than SF because it is so much bigger. The swath stretching all the way from the Loop to Rogers Park, as well as Northwest from the Loop to Wicker Park, Logan Square, etc. And all those areas in between. It’s an impressively large stretch of dense urbanity. SFs mid- and outer neighborhoods are - with a few exceptions - very impressive from an urban perspective, but they don’t go on for nearly as long. You hit water.
In terms of cosmopolitan, I’d say SF because it’s more diverse and international overall. Although it’s close.
Chicago also has a lot of mid and low-rise density and it has that pretty far out from its core especially to the north. Those further out neighborhoods with low-rise buildings sometimes with setbacks and a tiny space between buildings rather than attached in the residential streets, but then also feature a greater number of mid-rise and sometimes high-rise buildings especially on the main streets than their SF equivalents. I'm pretty certain that a roughly 47 square mile contiguous piece of Chicago with its core is denser than SF and I remember nei and others running the stats on such. It's probably a longer rectangular shape than the roughly square shape that SF has though since it'd be going up the northern lakefront more.
Last edited by OyCrumbler; 09-20-2019 at 06:20 AM..
Can we talk about how which is more urban and which is more cosmopolitan is two completely seperate debates.
Like Des Moines, IA is more cosmopolitan than Tokyo, Japan but obviously less urban.
Likewise Chicago is much more urban but SF is more cosmopolitan.
It would be for most definitions of the word cosmopolitan be fairly difficult to argue that Des Moines is more so than Tokyo. Perhaps you're thinking specifically of ethnically diverse or foreign-born by percentages but not total number?
It would be for most definitions of the word cosmopolitan be fairly difficult to argue that Des Moines is more so than Tokyo. Perhaps you're thinking specifically of ethnically diverse or foreign-born by percentages but not total number?
Cosmopolitan means unity of world. it’s pretty hard for any city in America to be less cosmopolitan than Toyko or most Chinese cities.
Cosmopolitan means unity of world. it’s pretty hard for any city in America to be less cosmopolitan than Toyko or most Chinese cities.
What's unity of the world though? Certainly by percentage numbers, there are probably a greater proportion of people born in another country in Des Moines than in Tokyo, but by absolute numbers Tokyo probably greatly exceeds Des Moines. In terms of the number of countries represented by a foreign national living in each respective city, Tokyo also does better. Foreign nationals may constitute a small four percent percentage of Tokyo's population, but in absolute numbers they count up to over a half million within Tokyo itself which is almost the entire population of Des Moines's MSA population. The vast majority of foreign nationals in Japan reside in one of the three major metropolitan areas.
Then in terms of availability of goods and services from different parts of the world, which is another way to talk about being cosmopolitan, Tokyo also greatly exceeds Des Moines.
What's unity of the world though? Certainly by percentage numbers, there are probably a greater proportion of people born in another country in Des Moines than in Tokyo, but by absolute numbers Tokyo probably greatly exceeds Des Moines. In terms of the number of countries represented by a foreign national living in each respective city, Tokyo also does better. Foreign nationals may constitute a small four percent percentage of Tokyo's population, but in absolute numbers they count up to over a half million within Tokyo itself which is almost the entire population of Des Moines's MSA population. The vast majority of foreign nationals in Japan reside in one of the three major metropolitan areas.
Then in terms of availability of goods and services from different parts of the world, which is another way to talk about being cosmopolitan, Tokyo also greatly exceeds Des Moines.
Fine replace Des Moines with Houston.
Toyko is significantly less cosmopolitan than Houston but significantly more urban.
There are independent characteristics.
Just based on sheer size Toyko might have a lot of foreign nationals but it’d so diluted by Japanese culture it’s basically irrelevant
Birmingham, Manchester, Frankfurt, Munich, Hamburg, even Rome are not significantly denser than the likes of Boston, Washington, Philadelphia, and the more urban crop of American cities.
I don't think this is true. Those European cities will have higher density than the U.S. cities listed. They might not have higher peak densities (Northern European cities are significantly less dense than Southern European cities) but they are much denser overall, with very little North American-style sprawl.
Same scale, side by side overhead shot I complied.... For context Chicagos's Loop alone is 2x the size of Lower Manhattan.
The Loop is much smaller than Lower Manhattan, obviously. The actual Loop is physically tiny. If you look at those overheads, you see the Loop is about the same size as the SF financial district.
And your picture shows nothing. There is no way to tell how busy a city core is by taking a picture from space. All I can tell from that pic is that Chicago has far more waterfront highrise residentials than SF, which everyone already knew.
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