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Gastown (a small portion of Vancouver) does appear to have that style of urbanity yes. However, I don't see where it can be claimed as "more urban" than the most urban parts of any of the East Coast cities. It's at best equal, and even then doesn't appear to have the same character as most EC cities.
Never would say more urban. Just saying for people who think that all of Vancouver is PNW sterile vibes, it does have older neighborhoods like this. So it's somewhat mixed. And Yaletown is different as well. It's not PNW sterile.
Vancouver also breaks things down in well-defined divisions with 23 official neighborhoods. I think with that, forming a contiguous roughly ~22-23 square mile area for Vancouver should be pretty easy. Density-wise, it's obviously not going to beat out Havana which did 800K-900K in 21.6 square miles (and could have been populous if we removed the municipality of Regla, and can find the statistics for the wards that comprise Miramar).
How is zero lot development with no breaks creating a streetwall ugly? NYC creates the same streetwall. What do you mean? Why is that a bad thing?
It's not ugly, but Vancouver builds differently for many reasons, but one is views. Having towers purposely spaced apart affords more buildings to have 360 degree views of the mountains and harbour.
Vancouver's towers are generally too far apart. Along with the fact they're usually skinny, the result is good density but not great density. It rarely feels like you're really in the 100% location of a big city.
I think the idea of doing a Manhattan-sized area isn't too bad with whatever passes for existing more granular divisions in each respective city to build up to that ~22 square miles. I'll do the Chicago community area at one point, and there's maybe an imperfect path to doing so with a further breakdown of CDMX's 16 municipalities (the municipalities don't quite fit into that very well). Havana has maybe a nice breakdown with the 15 municipalities, because the more central municipalities are denser, and thus more urban, and are smaller than the outer municipalities. Beats trying to go down into the 105 wards they're broken up into for now, since that'd be a lot more work.
I agree with you on that, but this is really about what people see walking down the street for the built environment. Having that 50,000 people per square mile population doesn’t help make those neighborhoods vibrant like mixed use retail laden neighborhoods that are built up, but have a lower population density. Vibrancy and the built environment is a much better indicator than a figure you would have to research at the census bureau to find out.
What you say is true, but someone would never know it walking down those streets.
but they are very mixed use and very vibrant and active; I think you just don't like the construct. Suggesting S Philly is not urban seems like a weird flex likely to make DC look better
but they are very mixed use and very vibrant and active; I think you just don't like the construct. Suggesting S Philly is not urban seems like a weird flex likely to make DC look better
I definitely didn’t say it wasn’t urban. It’s very urban. I just asked whether it should be included in the urban core? I think we have discussed this before. If predominantly row-house neighborhoods without a mix of mid rise buildings should be included as urban enough to be a part of the urban core, would most of the city of Philadelphia be the urban core? Most of Philadelphia is covered with row-house neighborhoods. The entire city would be a part of the urban core. What wouldn’t be included at that point?
So we've got CDMX, Havana, and Manhattan (the original reference for carving out a division). I still owe a Chicago one based on community areas--I outlined which areas, but didn't tabulate anything or do a particularly good check of its size. I also had a suggestion for how to do Vancouver, though I don't reckon anyone's rearing to take me up on that one.
The three Manhattan-sized in terms of area (~22-23 square miles) urban core divisions tabulated so far (CDMX, Havana, NYC) are major commercial and job centers, and in the case of CDMX and Havana, major centers of government as well. Since it's measuring areas that are substantially smaller than that of SF, DC, Boston, or Vancouver, but with a larger population size, it's a pretty reasonable that NYC, CDMX, and Habana get on the list before any of those cities do. There's also still Santo Domingo, Chicago, Port-au-Prince, Panama City, Guadalajara, Monterrey, Philadelphia, and Los Angeles to figure out along with those.
I wonder what this would be for the other cities mentioned so far. There's a lot of DC talk, but I don't see the proposed breakdowns for it. The quadrants are probably too unwieldy and I think the neighborhoods often overlap and are kind of informal? DC seems like it'll be a tough one.
Chicago I'll do via its 77 community areas and I outlined what areas I think make sense earlier. I'll do that as a separate post. Vancouver has its 23 municipalities that can be used to break things down, but it's also certainly not going to make the top 7 cut-off in North America when going over a contiguous Manhattan-sized blob. Philadelphia has its 12 planning analysis divisions which is what this article is broken up into--hopefully there's some recent studies put out by the city using these divisions. Unfortunately, I think Philadelphia is also going to have a bit of weird split, because I think after Center City (which is a given), there's the issue of picking only two out of West Philadelphia, South Philadelphia, and Lower North Philadelphia since three would go well past the ~22-23 square miles.
Last edited by OyCrumbler; 03-30-2020 at 03:54 PM..
Thank you. Which is all i'm saying. It's urban, but doesn't compare to EC/ NE corridor development at all. Apples and oranges obviously, but it's urban core doesn't surpass any of those.
It depends on what we're talking about. In terms of character, architecture and classical urbanism, then yes Vancouver is not up there with the Northeast cities or SF. However, in terms of functional, pedestrian-oriented urbanity, it's right there with them. As Jesse said, Vancouver's urban planning style creates one of the most urban feelings on the street you could ask for, regardless of traditional street walls or not. Instead of short mixed-use with retail ground floor and apartments above, Vancouver has walls of retail at 1-2 stories with tower podiums above. It provides at least the same density, if not higher density and on the ground it has the same feeling of hustle and bustle that the NE cities and SF have. You still have a consistent streetwall of storefronts throughout downtown and for miles along many of the corridors outside of downtown.
It's absolutely nothing like Miami at street level and more closely resembles NE cities (although really it's its own thing).
Last edited by Vincent_Adultman; 03-30-2020 at 05:18 PM..
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