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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
It's definitely a different story when compared to Houston just as most people would likely feel that there is a sizable difference in how cosmopolitan Houston and Des Moines are from each other. Houston's metropolitan area is an order of magnitude more populous than that of Des Moines and it's the fifth most populous in the US, so no arguments from me that Houston is more cosmopolitan than Tokyo by most definitions. Des Moines, which I have nothing against, is quite a different story.
This is untrue. Cosmopolitanism is the idea that all humans belong to a single community. Tokyo is a very cosmopolitan city, as it's a world city.
And it doesn't even make sense. Tokyo is vastly more diverse than Des Moines. Tokyo has massive diversity. Diversity is much more than % black or % immigrant. Are there diverse thinkers, diverse backgrounds, diverse lifestyles? Of course.
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.
The Loop as in just the area bounded by the Loop rail is about the size of the SF financial district. The Loop as in the community district or the greater high-rise downtown area is a lot larger than its equivalent in SF. You can see from the overhead pictures that quite a bit of the high-rise area outside of the Loop rail area isn't right on the waterfront either.
I agree that a picture from space isn't enough. On ground level, SF may look busier in some parts in the downtown core due to parts of it having narrower streets. Chicago has wider streets, but that doesn't necessarily mean the pedestrian count in the greater downtown area is actually low. Also keep in mind that Chicago has the pedway downtown connecting buildings, and second and third level streets for traffic.
The Loop as in just the area bounded by the Loop rail is about the size of the SF financial district. The Loop as in the community district or the greater high-rise downtown area is a lot larger than its equivalent in SF. You can see from the overhead pictures that quite a bit of the high-rise area outside of the Loop rail area isn't right on the waterfront either.
Highrises have nothing to do with relative downtown size. No one is arguing that SF has more highrises than Chicago.
SF has a large downtown, not that much smaller than Chicago. The Loop is quite small, physically. Greater downtown Chicago is large, but not multiples larger than SF.
This is all pretty silly. I agree Chicago has a larger core than SF, but maybe 20-40% larger. Certainly not 4x larger, LOL. The entire NE quadrant of SF functions as the metropolitan core. It's a big, urban city, with tighter fabric than Chicago.
I'm talking about volume and scale of skyscrapers, not land area. Chicago has a massive gap over San Fracisco in towers of every height increment.
Same scale, side by side overhead shot I complied.... For context Chicagos's Loop alone is 2x the size of Lower Manhattan.
I love SF, but lets be real... Chicagos core operates on a completely different scale in every sense of the term (and its not even fully pictured here).
Great post, this is what I was talking about when I said Chicago's core is 4 times the scale/volume of San Francisco. Looking at those images it could be more like 6 or more. Again, it's no different than comparing Chicago to Manhattan because Chicago is to every other U.S. city what Manhattan is to Chicago.
For the record, Google hasn't updated Chicago's satelite imagery since 2013 while hundreds of structures have been added expanding and desnifying the core rather extesnively.
Highrises have nothing to do with relative downtown size. No one is arguing that SF has more highrises than Chicago.
SF has a large downtown, not that much smaller than Chicago. The Loop is quite small, physically. Greater downtown Chicago is large, but not multiples larger than SF.
The high-rises have to do with mega-city vibes, magnitude, history, visual stimulation, architectual diversity and canyonization as well as the psychological impact of being completely overwhelmed by a sea of dense structures that creates an instense urban experience where you witness masterpieces radiating in every direction from every style and period since the skyscraper's inception which only Chicago and NY offer explicitly. Of course this is a major factor when comparing cities. Who's going to cast aside Chicago's exhaustive, museum like skyscraper collection and claim some dense low-rises over land areas roughly the same physical size somehow compenstaes for this massive gulf in height and grandeur making them seem even remotely similar in look, feel or scale?
When you debate Chicago vs. NY the first point they are going to is the fact that Manhattan's skyscraper volume is a couple tiers above making Chicago look suburban by comparison which creates an entirely different level of urbansim and scale. Same conclusion has to be formed when comparing Chicago and S.F's cores.... It's like me claiming Fulton Market offers the same urban experience as Billionaires Row.
This was just discussed in the Boston thread. 10-12 miles from downtown Chicago you are still among pre-war architecture, high-rises, retail corridors, parks and dense housing on a grid. Even less then 10 miles from Boston you're in subrubia then the sticks. You can't compare Boston to a city of Chicago's scale no matter how many other towns you throw in.
Last edited by IronWright; 09-20-2019 at 04:01 PM..
I'm talking about volume and scale of skyscrapers, not land area. Chicago has a massive gap over San Fracisco in towers of every height increment.
Of course it does. Everyone knows Chicago has more highrises than SF. But what does this have to do with anything?
We're talking about urban cores. Highrises have nothing to do with urban core size or vitality. Dallas doesn't have a bigger or better urban core than Paris because it has far more highrises.
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.
The Loop is the second largest CBD after Midtown Manhattan. It's x2 the size of Lower Manhattan by building sq/ft and SF doesn't even approach that. Chicago operates on a completely different scale than SF.
Second was asking the core size of each city respectively not how busy they are... Sure San Fran has narrower streets and can feel claustrophobic at times, but its downtown simply lacks the breadth of Chicago. Chicago is going to blow SF completely out the water just on sheer residential population residing in its core
SF is to Chicago as Chicago is to NYC when it comes to sheer urbanity and scope... all three operate on different scales.
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