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Well, you're using real numbers where you're looking at stats for housing units and percentage as attached units, right? I do not think the resident09's number are meant to be taken as hard numbers. I am curious as to what percentage of housing stock in Baltimore is attached now (2020 census as there wasn't just a large population drop in Baltimore between the 2010 and 2020 census, but a large destruction of units and I believe the vast majority of these were multi-family units and attached rowhomes) and where the sources are from. I also wonder if they still get counted as attached even if the rowhomes around it are either demolished or vacant beyond repair. and quite a few others, but since they are now standalone, do the stats count them still as attached?
New SFH is almost unheard of due to zoning laws.
The ratio of multi-family is definitely higher than it used to be with the wave of development around the harbor but the city actually builds more rowhomes than it demo’s so there actually a decent net positive (this is reflected by the increase in occupied housing metrics)
Location: That star on your map in the middle of the East Coast, DMV
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Quote:
Originally Posted by OyCrumbler
Yes, 50 square miles. Here's a cul-de-sac about 2 miles from Atlanta's City Hall in an area with other cul-de-sacs of detached SFHs. Atlanta isn't the largest city or metropolitan area, but few would say that it is not of significant size in the context of US cities.
Here's one also about 2 miles out from the White House in DC which is generally considered a more urban city in a nice neighborhood that has several of such.
The problem with this, at least in your examples of DC, and of Baltimore, are that you can easily cherry pick into another direction, due North or NE for DC and the urbanity doesn't drop. You are just intentionally pointing towards areas where it does break, but there are stretches where it does not and for miles.
This is over 8 miles from the US Capitol to the North. There's no drop in urbanity over that stretch nor any SFH homes in between.
In Baltimore, York Rd is an urban strip running from the suburbs all the way into downtown. There are some SFH houses along the way down into the city, but on small lots of land, not much different than Houston or LA. So then why not does Baltimore get to count this entire stretch as contiguous urbanity all the way to Towson?
Yes for Atlanta but I’m not sure I would say 50 square miles in Houston puts you “way out in winding cul-de-sac territory”. Houston is built on a continuous grid. You might see a few in River Oaks but most of Houston’s inner 50 sq mi are gridded.
Yea, "way out in winding cul-de-sac territory" is an exaggeration. I should have written that in some directions you can get to cul-de-sac neighborhoods within 4 miles of downtown.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Joakim3
Baltimore only builds multi-family and rowhomes. It hasn’t built a single SFH in decades due to zoning laws.
The ratio of multi-family is definitely higher than it used to be with the wave of development around the harbor but the city actually builds more rowhomes than it demo’s so there actually a decent net positive (this is reflected by the increase in occupied housing metrics)
I wasn't under the impression that there was much new or any detached SFH construction in Baltimore. Instead, I was under the impression that there were fairly few new units added while there were proportionally more destroyed or abandoned rowhome and multi-family units compared to detached SFHs which for the most part have escaped abandonment. Did Baltimore really increase the number of residential structures from 2010 to 2020? Do you have stats on that?
Quote:
Originally Posted by the resident09
The problem with this, at least in your examples of DC, and of Baltimore, are that you can easily cherry pick into another direction, due North or NE for DC and the urbanity doesn't drop. You are just intentionally pointing towards areas where it does break, but there are stretches where it does not and for miles.
This is over 8 miles from the US Capitol to the North. There's no drop in urbanity over that stretch nor any SFH homes in between.
In Baltimore, York Rd is an urban strip running from the suburbs all the way into downtown. There are some SFH houses along the way down into the city, but on small lots of land, not much different than Houston or LA. So then why not does Baltimore get to count this entire stretch as contiguous urbanity all the way to Towson?
I don't see a problem with saying that the most urban contiguous 50 square miles should avoid going towards the direction of the least dense units--I'd think it'd be ridiculous to do that, but the post I was responding to said something along the lines of they're thinking that, paraphrasing here, "[4 miles] takes you out into cul-de-sac territory in any significantly sized American city" which is inaccurate. I said as much when I was talking about DC's 50 square miles where I think it should go out more than 4 miles from downtown DC into some of the Maryland suburbs. That stretch shooting up into downtown Silver Spring is about 9 miles to Southwest waterfront and that's where the blob for DC should "lean" towards. However, not that a circle with a radius of 4 has a diameter of 8 miles and while that major axis to Silver Spring is a bit longer than needed, there's unfortunately a bit less urbanity on that minor axis, so 50 square miles does necessitate grabbing some not all that urban parts for DC unless you were going to gerrymander the **** out of it though doing so would also mean that other cities should be able to do such and then that metric gets a bit unwieldy, and I think that's something that LA especially would benefit from if we're going to cobble together disparate parts with pretty thin tendrils.
The York Road example is interesting. Is it accurate to say York Road / Greenmount Ave is a major arterial for Baltimore? I think it'd have a better case for the extension to Towson if this were zoned the way Toronto has zoned a major arterial or to a lesser extent how LA's major arterials have been zoned recently and Baltimore were having a major population boom where York Road would have some mixed-use structures sometimes high-rises all the way up to downtown Towson and with major intersections with arterials that did like-wise. As such, it doesn't seem like that's the case so it doesn't really get to much structural, commercial, or population density for linking these. Since you know these two cities best, what would you use as the contiguous urban 50 square miles for DC and Baltimore respectively and what are the data sources you're using to form them?
I can do LA later. I'm not going to do Houston as I'm not that familiar with the city, and I sincerely doubt it's currently in contention for anything close to top 20 on the list I made. I'll add that I'm definitely open to readjusting the rankings, and especially with the help of others. I think the ranking of the top three are pretty firmly set (Manhattan + parts of the Bronx, Brooklyn minus a bit of its own neighborhoods and with the addition of at least Ridgewood from Queens, and then Queens in its western and some of its central parts), and then I think some internal shuffling from where I put Chicago down to DC, and then more internal shuffling from where I put Seattle down to Baltimore and East Bay with maybe bits of Los Angeles moving down or up among these groups as Los Angeles is a somewhat difficult one to slice into 50 square mile chunks, and then probably something missed in the parts down from there. I'm also too lazy to take a closer look at Honolulu, but I suspect that it should be pushed off the list. I have questions about the contiguous-ness of some of the ones listed. I reckon some potentially interesting chunks can be made of South Side Chicago, the Twin Cities, Portland, San Diego, Denver, Dallas, an expanded Newark area (including some of what I mentioned about Hudson County that are more an expansion of the Newark area), a slice of Eastern Queens if more set boundaries for the Brooklyn chunk and Western/Central Queens chunk are set, among other parts. I'm hoping that some of the posters on here, including yourself, present some 50 contiguous urban square mile chunks and the data sources for them to help figure some of this out.
Last edited by OyCrumbler; 02-02-2023 at 03:30 PM..
I wasn't under the impression that there was much new or any detached SFH construction in Baltimore. Instead, I was under the impression that there were fairly few new units added while there were destroyed or abandoned rowhome and multi-family units while SFHs mostly escaped abandonment. Did Baltimore really increase the number of residential structures from 2010 to 2020? Do you have stats on that?
Baltimore has demoed a shade over 5k units since 2016. The city has been averaging roughly 2-3k new units per year for quite some time now.
The city is physically getting denser because demolitions can’t keep up with vacancies (population loss) so the city is left with a lot of excess housing (in various states of abandonment) all while at all time high construction.
Baltimore has demoed a shade over 5k units since 2016. The city has been averaging roughly 2-3k new units per year for quite some time now.
The city is physically getting denser because demolitions can’t keep up with vacancies (population loss) so the city is left with a lot of excess housing (in various states of abandonment) all while at all time high construction.
That makes sense. Where did you get the stats for new units per year and for how long? It'd be interesting to see the change from the 2010 to 2020 census. Does Baltimore actually have more units in 2020 than in 2010? It'd be nice to get more complete stats as the population has obviously seen a heavy drop.
Ville Marie - 89K in 6.4 sq miles
Le Sud Ouest - 78K in 6.1 sq miles
Verdun - 69K in 3.7 sq miles
Outremont - 24K in 1.5 sq miles
Le Plateau - Mont Royal - 104K in 3.1 sq miles (The most dense borough in Montreal with a ppsm of 33000)
Cote Des Neiges - 166K in 8.3 sq miles
Rosemont - 140K in 6.1 sq miles
Villeray - 144 in 6.4 sq miles
Ahuntsic Cartierville - 134 in 9.3 sq miles
This adds up to 948K in 50.9 sq miles. Unfortunately the population of each borough was from the 2016 census. Montreal city added 60K residents from 2016 to 2021 with the majority of them in these boroughs so Montreal is either at at this point or very close to 1 million in 50 sq miles.
If anyone more familiar with Montreal wants to pick this apart by all means but I think I captured the most dense and contiguous boroughs of Montreal within 50 contiguous sq miles
Ville Marie - 89K in 6.4 sq miles
Le Sud Ouest - 78K in 6.1 sq miles
Verdun - 69K in 3.7 sq miles
Outremont - 24K in 1.5 sq miles
Le Plateau - Mont Royal - 104K in 3.1 sq miles (The most dense borough in Montreal with a ppsm of 33000)
Cote Des Neiges - 166K in 8.3 sq miles
Rosemont - 140K in 6.1 sq miles
Villeray - 144 in 6.4 sq miles
Ahuntsic Cartierville - 134 in 9.3 sq miles
This adds up to 948K in 50.9 sq miles. Unfortunately the population of each borough was from the 2016 census. Montreal city added 60K residents from 2016 to 2021 with the majority of them in these boroughs so Montreal is either at at this point or very close to 1 million in 50 sq miles.
If anyone more familiar with Montreal wants to pick this apart by all means but I think I captured the most dense and contiguous boroughs of Montreal within 50 contiguous sq miles
That makes sense. Where did you get the stats for new units per year and for how long? It'd be interesting to see the change from the 2010 to 2020 census. Does Baltimore actually have more units in 2020 than in 2010? It'd be nice to get more complete stats as the population has obviously seen a heavy drop.
That’s units U/C at any given time mind you, so with a ~2 year turn around construction time, the amount delivered per year is a lot lower.
Baltimore supposedly had a net loss of 3,436 housing units. Obviously, units don't tell you the size, but I think there's a good chance that a good proportion of it was rowhomes and more so than detached SFH. I also take this to mean that vacant housing units in varying conditions are not counted as loss units, but it don't know if that's actually the case. I'm also not sure how conversions work in these numbers. Like, do single family rowhomes converted to multiple units mean that the same structure adds more housing units though the structure is essentially the same? Do conversions of other buildings to housing also mean a raw addition? I think if what I'm saying is accurate in that detached SFH have for the most part escaped destruction, then the overall balance of people living in detached SFH within Baltimore has grown though I also reckon much of that would not be included in the most urban contiguous 50 square miles. We can also go back to 2000 census and see that there was a net loss of housing units then (and a growth in vacant housing units between 2000 and 2010 despite a net loss of housing units): https://planning.baltimorecity.gov/s...02000-2010.pdf
Regardless, I think it's accurate to say that Baltimore over the last decade for at least a 50 square mile contiguous area and likely the city overall has gotten structurally less dense, though is still among the structurally and population-wise densest contiguous 50 square miles in the US.
Going back to the ranking where I was a bit iffy on where Seattle and Baltimore are in relation to each other, it appears Seattle on net added over 50,000 units to the city for a total of around 368,000 units with minimal vacancy and higher number of residents per housing units. What's more, the additions were disproportionately to the core districts (especially district 3 and 7) more than the outer ones. If my guess about Baltimore is correct, then the core most urban 50 square miles netted the highest proportion of losses in housing units than the city overall while the core most urban 50 square miles of Seattle netted higher proportion of gains in housing units than the city overall which I think is part of a pretty decent argument for putting Seattle over Baltimore in structural density (I believe Seattle also has significantly more hotel rooms and office square footage than Baltimore as well as now greater number of housing units) to go along with what are already higher population and job densities.
Last edited by OyCrumbler; 02-02-2023 at 06:05 PM..
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