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I personally would consider 20k ppsm [very] high density (as a reference, city-data considers a minimum of just 6,000 ppsm to be "high density" for any municipality) for a neighborhood, but ppsm alone doesn't always tell you how urban a place is really. Built environment and walk ability should be taken into consideration. I mean, there are parts of Aurora (far west suburb of Chicago) where a sizable portion of the population live in adjoined tracts of 15-18k ppsm, but I wouldn't say that this two sq mile area is of similar urbanity as Pilsen or a neighborhood in the bungalow belt (southwest and northwest sides) of Chicago. Look at parts of New Orleans. The French Quarter in its densest tract is only 8.3k ppsm (obviously it's not so much of a residential community), but no way you wouldn't consider the built environment among the most urban in the US. https://www.google.com/maps/@29.9577...JAYJoWLmkyimgc https://www.google.com/maps/@29.9617...7i16384!8i8192 https://www.google.com/maps/@29.9566...7i16384!8i8192
With regards to this thread's OP it's pretty simple once it's broken down.
The top 6 city urban cores of the US are widely regarded as:
NYC
Chicago
SF
Philly/Boston
DC
With LA, Baltimore, and Seattle being regarded as next.
For Canada the four or 5 would be:
Montreal
Toronto
Ottawa
Vancouver
Quebec City
Mexico:
Ciudad de Mexico (DF)
Monterrey
Guadalajara
Juarez
The rest of the continent:
Santo Domingo
La Habana
Panama City
Port au Prince
Seven seems like a cherry picked number, but if picking 7 instead of 10, the top 4 in the US would make the cut automatically. NYC, Chicago, SF and either Philly or Boston. DC would make the cut for 10 in NA, but fall just outside the top 7.
With that said there's only 3 slots remaining. Obviously Mexico City makes the cut, and my opinion would be Montreal does too. This leaves only one slot left as a toss up outside the US cities between Toronto, Monterrey, Santo Domingo, Havana, as well as either Philly or Boston whichever was left out of top 4 in the US.
One challenging aspect to this exercise is it's difficult to compare the urbanity of cities in developed countries (US and Canada) and the developing world (Mexico and the rest of the continent).
I'm generalizing a relatively diverse group of cities here, but overall cities in North America's developing countries tend to have more consistent urban fabrics in terms of building connectivity, lack of setbacks, a lack of American-style suburban neighborhoods within city limits, and are relatively vibrant in terms of life happening on the street.
But (aside from Panama City) they also lack the height the cities in the US and Canada have, have more dilapidated architecture, have extreme poverty in huge swaths of the city that create more of a shanty-town vibe and lack the proliferation of the type of commerce (certain types of retail, restaurants, bars, etc.) that US and Canadian urban dwellers are used to. In some ways shanty town-esque environments are very urban and vibrant but in other ways they are not. It just makes it very difficult to make apples-to-apples comparisons. Compared to Mexico City or Santo Domingo, virtually every American or Canadian city feels sterile.
Also, I don't mean to come off as coarse - I realize that how "urban" a city feels matters very little to people who are living in poverty and dilapidated conditions. And of course that these cities are not as one-dimensional as my description is making them out to be. But this broader distinction is relevant to this exercise and I have a hard time combining my rankings for US/Canadian cities and Mexico/the rest of the continent.
In terms of just the US and Canada, after reconsideration, I'd say my list of most urban cores (which I consider to be downtown and the immediate adjacent areas) my list would go:
1) NYC
2) Chicago
3) Montreal
4) San Francisco
5) Toronto
6) Philadelphia
7) Boston
8) Vancouver
9) DC
10) Baltimore
11) Seattle
12) LA
If we expanded the definition of urban core to include the next set of neighborhoods LA would probably move up the list a bit.
In terms of cities in Mexico and the rest of the continent, I've only been to Mexico City, which is extremely urban and I'm sure is the clear #1, but I don't know enough about the others to rank them.
So here's an update for a Manhattan-sized core with Panama City:
City | Divisions
Land Area
Population (Year)
New York City | Manhattan
22.83 sq mi
1,628,701 people (2018)
Mexico City | Cuauhtémoc, Benito Juárez
22.81 sq mi | 12.53 + 10.28
917,270 people | 531,831 + 385,439 (2010)
Habana | Plaza de la Revolución, Centro Habana, La Habana Vieja, Regla, Diez de Octubre, Cerro
21.6 sq mi | 5 + 2 + 2 + 3.6 + 5 + 4
821,841 people | 61,631 + 158,151 + 97,984 + 44,431 + 227,293 + 132,351 (2004)
Chicago | Near North Side, Loop, Lake View, Lincoln Park, Uptown, Edgewater, Rogers Park, Lincoln Square, North Center, Near South Side
22.7428 sq mi | 2.6948 + 1.555 + 3.12 + 3.097 + 2.319 + 1.721 + 1.845 + 2.555 + 2.044 + 1.792
568,965 people | 89,995 + 37,647 + 100,547 + 68,697 + 58,424 + 57,022 + 54,872 + 41,713 + 35,705 + 24,343 (2018)
Panama City | Bella Vista, Betania, Calidonia, Curundú, El Chorrillo, Parque Lefevre, Pueblo Nuevo, Rio Abajo, San Felipe, San Francisco, Santa Ana; Amelia Denis de Icaza, Belisario Porras, Mateo Iturralde, Victoriano Lorenzo, Belisario Frías
22.2 sq mi | 16.4 + 5.8
471,040 people | 290997 (2016) + 180043 (2018)
Chicago | Near North Side, Loop, Near South Side, Lake View, Lincoln Park, West Town, Near West Side
22.72 sq mi | 2.72 + 1.58 + 1.75 + 3.16 + 3.19 + 4.57 + 5.75
463,947 people | 88,893 + 35,880 + 23,620 + 100,470 + 67,710 + 84,502 + 62,872 (2017)
Also, in case anyone is looking to do so, here are some some potential avenues for making ~22-23 square mile areas contiguous with the CBD for other cities:
Other cities that might be decent top 7 contenders are Guadalajara, Monterrey, Port-au-Prince, San Francisco, Boston, DC, and Los Angeles. I think New York City, Mexico City, Havana, Chicago, and Santo Domingo are essentially shoe-ins. I haven't run more granular stats on Santo Domingo, but just how densely the city as a whole is built out and its function as a national capital makes it pretty likely.
I'm really curious in Philly but don't have the time to calculate it.
I personally would consider 20k ppsm [very] high density (as a reference, city-data considers a minimum of just 6,000 ppsm to be "high density" for any municipality) for a neighborhood, but ppsm alone doesn't always tell you how urban a place is really. Built environment and walk ability should be taken into consideration. I mean, there are parts of Aurora (far west suburb of Chicago) where a sizable portion of the population live in adjoined tracts of 15-18k ppsm, but I wouldn't say that this two sq mile area is of similar urbanity as Pilsen or a neighborhood in the bungalow belt (southwest and northwest sides) of Chicago. Look at parts of New Orleans. The French Quarter in its densest tract is only 8.3k ppsm (obviously it's not so much of a residential community), but no way you wouldn't consider the built environment among the most urban in the US. https://www.google.com/maps/@29.9577...JAYJoWLmkyimgc https://www.google.com/maps/@29.9617...7i16384!8i8192 https://www.google.com/maps/@29.9566...7i16384!8i8192
Yeah, totally agree. Definitely been to many places in the world that feel less or more dense than their statistics led on. There's a ton of factors in this starting with the actual makeup of the built environment to how many people are out and about. It's hard to tell who walking around or at restaurants and what not is actually from there as a resident and who is not. My in laws' area in the outskirts of Shanghai is probably around 20,000 ppsm, but it feels less dense because there's a bunch of gardens and zen ponds in the middle of all the high rises. The high rises have space in between them - not 1 or 2 feet but like 30 feet. It feels much more suburban than the statistical 20K ppsm it is.
In another post I compared Gold Coast in Chicago to some places in Toronto. The densities are similar to Astoria in Queens. Gold Coast definitely feels denser because the built environment is full of way more high rises than Astoria. There's way more hotels too, so there's that factor too. The resident population might be 37K people, but counting the hotels, the average population of who is "living" there on any given day is probably more like 50K people (which would push the density up to around 85K ppsm). Astoria doesn't have many hotels or anything like that. There are way less tourists there staying there or just walking around. So statistically they're similar but I think Gold Coast feels denser due to other factors.
I think population is the beginning of the conversation, but there's definitely more factors into how dense or urban some place is.
One challenging aspect to this exercise is it's difficult to compare the urbanity of cities in developed countries (US and Canada) and the developing world (Mexico and the rest of the continent).
I'm generalizing a relatively diverse group of cities here, but overall cities in North America's developing countries tend to have more consistent urban fabrics in terms of building connectivity, lack of setbacks, a lack of American-style suburban neighborhoods within city limits, and are relatively vibrant in terms of life happening on the street.
But (aside from Panama City) they also lack the height the cities in the US and Canada have, have more dilapidated architecture, have extreme poverty in huge swaths of the city that create more of a shanty-town vibe and lack the proliferation of the type of commerce (certain types of retail, restaurants, bars, etc.) that US and Canadian urban dwellers are used to. In some ways shanty town-esque environments are very urban and vibrant but in other ways they are not. It just makes it very difficult to make apples-to-apples comparisons. Compared to Mexico City or Santo Domingo, virtually every American or Canadian city feels sterile.
Also, I don't mean to come off as coarse - I realize that how "urban" a city feels matters very little to people who are living in poverty and dilapidated conditions. And of course that these cities are not as one-dimensional as my description is making them out to be. But this broader distinction is relevant to this exercise and I have a hard time combining my rankings for US/Canadian cities and Mexico/the rest of the continent.
In terms of just the US and Canada, after reconsideration, I'd say my list of most urban cores (which I consider to be downtown and the immediate adjacent areas) my list would go:
1) NYC
2) Chicago
3) Montreal
4) San Francisco
5) Toronto
6) Philadelphia
7) Boston
8) Vancouver
9) DC
10) Baltimore
11) Seattle
12) LA
If we expanded the definition of urban core to include the next set of neighborhoods LA would probably move up the list a bit.
In terms of cities in Mexico and the rest of the continent, I've only been to Mexico City, which is extremely urban and I'm sure is the clear #1, but I don't know enough about the others to rank them.
I understand where you're coming from, but in terms of large cities, it's really only Port-au-Prince in Haiti that's both a contender and incredibly rundown and impoverished. One of the attributes of many developing countries is that there will be regions that do much better than others and those are often the capital cities. For example, using the formula for Human Development Index is a pretty common way to see how "developed" a country is. Sometimes that formula is put to subnational entities, and in the case of Santo Domingo and its surrounding province, that area definitely scores higher than the country as a whole.
I also think one thing I'd argue is the US does have some cities where parts of the urban core do actually look quite rundown and are statistically not all that safe.
I do think opening this up to all of North America does make it more interesting as there's been quite a few purely US and Canadian city matchups and rankings.
Last edited by OyCrumbler; 04-02-2020 at 04:01 PM..
I don't see how Baltimore could possibly rate above Seattle....substantially lower population density within city limits (7,500 to 8,900), much smaller downtown, much lower transit commute share (16% to 23%), much lower walk commute share (6% to 12%)...
It seems to be about the feel of a townhouse city vs. a house and apartment city.
I don't see how Baltimore could possibly rate above Seattle....substantially lower population density within city limits (7,500 to 8,900), much smaller downtown, much lower transit commute share (16% to 23%), much lower walk commute share (6% to 12%)...
It seems to be about the feel of a townhouse city vs. a house and apartment city.
I thought long and hard about that one and ultimately I think you could flip those 2 - the thing that swayed me to Baltimore is that the inner neighborhoods are actually very urban - moreso than Downtown Baltimore in some ways - and so that gave it the edge. This comparison again gets to the core of what you mean by “urban” and on a different day I might put Seattle above Baltimore.
I don't see how Baltimore could possibly rate above Seattle....substantially lower population density within city limits (7,500 to 8,900), much smaller downtown, much lower transit commute share (16% to 23%), much lower walk commute share (6% to 12%)...
It seems to be about the feel of a townhouse city vs. a house and apartment city.
Greater structural density, more industrial areas especially amongst residential areas that give ya the traditional city feel. Classical downtown, lots of businesses open very late, more consistent residential density throughout a larger area
I don't see how Baltimore could possibly rate above Seattle....substantially lower population density within city limits (7,500 to 8,900), much smaller downtown, much lower transit commute share (16% to 23%), much lower walk commute share (6% to 12%)...
It seems to be about the feel of a townhouse city vs. a house and apartment city.
Much like a lot of these posts seem to put too much focus on "population density" when all it takes is one or two massive residential towers to skew numbers dramatically.
Quote:
Originally Posted by BostonBornMassMade
Greater structural density, more industrial areas especially amongst residential areas that give ya the traditional city feel. Classical downtown, lots of businesses open very late, more consistent residential density throughout a larger area
Obviously, Philadelphia would have to include Center City (the Central district), but then on from there it's probably South, University Southwest, and maybe Lower North unless all of that's too big. If you run into a source that does clean divisions and is in the max dozens rather than hundreds of divisions (i.e. census tracts), let me know.
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