Top 10 most urban contiguous 50 sq miles (skyline, live, better, largest)
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NYC most urban 50 square miles is gonna blue LA away. Doesn’t matter if la sprawls out 1000 square miles. We’re just looking at the most urban 50 square miles.
LA is the largest in terms of raw urbanized area though.
Exactly... (in bolded)
And their goes my point like in my other post above about NYC being some standard metric.
This thread talks about the 50sq mi. but after these duscussions we'll be back to reality in that NYC is just LA that's been squeezed like a sponge.
And their goes my point like in my other post above about NYC being some standard metric.
This thread talks about the 50sq mi. but after these duscussions we'll be back to reality in that NYC is just LA that's been squeezed like a sponge.
See I thought it would feel like that when I went to LA but it doesn’t really feel intense on the he ground really anywhere. I thought it would be like a different style of NYC in the feel of its enormity… but really it just felt like dense suburbia and wasn’t very impressive or interesting in terms of built form. It felts very manageable just, went on for a long time. In short it just didn’t feel like it was in the same plane as NYC which truly stands alone in so many things- including urbanity.
See I thought it would feel like that when I went to LA but it doesn’t really feel intense on the he ground really anywhere. I thought it would be like a different style of NYC in the feel of its enormity… but really it just felt like dense suburbia and wasn’t very impressive or interesting in terms of built form. It felts very manageable just, went on for a long time. In short it just didn’t feel like it was in the same plane as NYC which truly stands alone in so many things- including urbanity.
NYC is compacts a disproportionately larger percentage of its Metro/UA in a very small space (relatively) where as LA’s is substantially more linear, hence the difference in built environment/feel on the ground
NYC is compacts a disproportionately larger percentage of its Metro/UA in a very small space (relatively) where as LA’s is substantially more linear, hence the difference in built environment/feel on the ground
Yea I understand that- it’s just I wouldn’t say NYC and LA are the same in terms of their overall urbanity of the metro because really much of what urban in LA feels suburban and very ‘Levittown’ like. Most of the area feels like Willingboro NJ or Bristol PA with palm trees. Not what I’d really call urban.
I don’t equate suburban with urban as is the case when things like UA and MSA come up with their definitions.
I compiled a big list of all the zip codes that make up and surround Downtown Boston, then I sorted them by density. Here is a map with the results!
The numbers show the density rank relative to all the other zip codes shown. Any not shown (with the exceptions of East Arlington and Wollaston) are not as densely populated as the ones filled in.
One thing I found really interesting is that once you get past the zip codes adjacent to the Charles (which of course were going to be the densest in the area) the density split between north and south of the river becomes pretty even. This starts vaguely with #11, which is all the way up by Davis, then you jump down to Dorchester at #15, Chelsea at #16, Brighton at #19, etc. I thought there'd be even more of a geographical trend when it came to ranking the outer zips by density.
Aaanyway. The area shaded in dark red is the answer for Boston for this thread at least by this method. Zip code can be a flawed way to look at things because of any empty space. Like East Boston would be much higher without the airport, Jamaica Plain without Franklin Park, Central Somerville without the Inner Belt, etc. Census tract or whatever the next more fine-grained area would probably get rid of some of that error, but at least at this time, I don't have the time/energy to try and re-do this using those smaller definitions.
In the shaded red area, you have exactly 886,869 people living in 49.866 square miles of land. The next step up (i.e. adding #35 or 02130 [JP]) brings you to 927,981 in 53.406 square miles of land. I fitted a trendline to the data on Excel to get an equation (R^2=0.9977) where I plugged "50" in and it spat out 896,475.
In just the dark red area, the racial composition is 47.2% White, 17.4% Black, 17.3% Hispanic, and 12.7% Asian.
For funsies, I went a little further. You can hit 1,007,805 people in 60.768 square miles by just adding two more zip codes: 02152 and 02151 (for Winthrop and Revere respectively). Round it out with 02128 (East Boston) to make it look pretty and you've got a total of 1,053,306 people connected by sidewalks around the Boston Harbor on 65.793 square miles of land. The composition of this larger group is 47.8% White, 20.1% Hispanic, 15.5% Black, and 11.4% Asian.
Demographic info came from the 2021 ACS 5 year estimates and the land area data came from the 2022 gazeteer files.
Edit: Bit unrelated, but the densest zip code in Boston is 02113 for the North End. It has 6,726 people living in an area with a density of 69,340 people per square mile. Are there many other zip codes outside of New York that have similar densities? The next one down is 02115 with 28,559 people and a density of 40,167 people per square mile.
This all makes sense. Not only is Chelsea included its very much included. There is no reasonable way to exclude it.
What is the population of the dark red area in total?
Because you say "shaded red area" im not sure which level of red you mean.
When I think of the Urban Boston area I'm basically thinking Lynn to the North, Quincy to the South, and Waltham to the West.
Last edited by BostonBornMassMade; 01-08-2023 at 03:38 PM..
Yea I understand that- it’s just I wouldn’t say NYC and LA are the same in terms of their overall urbanity of the metro because really much of what urban in LA feels suburban and very ‘Levittown’ like. Most of the area feels like Willingboro NJ or Bristol PA with palm trees. Not what I’d really call urban.
I don’t equate suburban with urban as is the case when things like UA and MSA come up with their definitions.
That's because you're from the eastcoast lol, so when you see single family houses the word urban is uncomputable in your head.
Research the actual dictionary definition of urban and you will see nothing that mentions the characteristics that stand out to you that's in NYC.
'A place relating to a city or town', that means even Mobile, AL is urban by definition. It has infrastructure in place to form a substantial population and can add more if need be. A non urban place would be some farmhouse in the middle of Kansas, nowhere. It doesn't really have the pipelines and electrical cables in place to add 100 more units or houses.
So basically going off from the textbook definition of urban, the "LA area" would qualify as one of the largest urban places in the country. And I say 'one of' just to be humble, because honestly it's actually the largest.
That's because you're from the eastcoast lol, so when you see single family houses the word urban is uncomputable in your head.
Research the actual dictionary definition of urban and you will see nothing that mentions the characteristics that stand out to you that's in NYC.
'A place relating to a city or town', that means even Mobile, AL is urban by definition. It has infrastructure in place to form a substantial population and can add more if need be. A non urban place would be some farmhouse in the middle of Kansas, nowhere. It doesn't really have the pipelines and electrical cables in place to add 100 more units or houses.
So basically going off from the textbook definition of urban, the "LA area" would qualify as one of the largest urban places in the country. And I say 'one of' just to be humble, because honestly it's actually the largest.
Yea i get it but really, the word suburban is a more apt descriptor imo. You can have SFHs in the urban environment- there were a few in the Chelsea street views. But when its predominately SFHs with lawn and stuff and your 20 miles from downtown..its suburban.
The urban vs rural dichotomy seems like a false-binary to me.
Like Willingboro NJ is as protypical post-war suburb as it gets. Id never use "urban to describe it. Yet it looks like most of LA..
The most urban vibe thing in these LA areas- to me, is the lack of trees. Driving through miles and miles of this is boring frankly. And at no point in LA do I feel the sheer enormity of encvironment of humanity of when im in South Bronx or Park Slope or even Flushing, Queens. And theres not much street vitality/life. To put it short- its most visually impressive from the plane.
This all makes sense. Not only is Chelsea included its very much included. There is no reasonable way to exclude it.
What is the population of the dark red area in total?
Because you say "shaded red area" im not sure which level of red you mean.
Dark red is “shaded red” as far as the explanation goes, and I bolded the pop of that area. The last 4 are lighter to show they are varying degrees of tacked-on, bringing the land area number above 50 sq miles.
Yea i get it but really, the word suburban is a more apt descriptor imo. You can have SFHs in the urban environment- there were a few in the Chelsea street views. But when its predominately SFHs with lawn and stuff and your 20 miles from downtown..its suburban.
The urban vs rural dichotomy seems like a false-binary to me.
Like Willingboro NJ is as protypical post-war suburb as it gets. Id never use "urban to describe it. Yet it looks like most of LA..
The most urban vibe thing in these LA areas- to me, is the lack of trees. Driving through miles and miles of this is boring frankly. And at no point in LA do I feel the sheer enormity of encvironment of humanity of when im in South Bronx or Park Slope or even Flushing, Queens. And theres not much street vitality/life. To put it short- its most visually impressive from the plane.
Nah I understand what you mean. I'm just pointing to the official definition of urban but I understand that perception holds just as much, if not more weight than statistics (my belief). But my other point is that going by the official definitions, it wouldn't be far fetched to say that LA would be NYC if you flatten it with a spatula.
If you smush NY down like a pancake, then you get LA lol.
That's basically what would happen in that scenario, LA.
If you flatten all those high rises and mid rises you get individuals houses and it's still roughly the same amount of people in a given area. There's still that same absurd amount of concrete that's poured to create that urban infrastructure. The difference being that now instead of walking through the urban jungle, you're driving through the urban safari, still surrounded by the roughly 18-23 million people in your 360° radius.
Btw that New Jersey example does look like Socal but it does have a hint of Houston/Dallas with the way the sidewalks are formed.
Look at LA & NYC sidewalks, they look similar as in the most advanced stages of sidewalk, curb design.
I appreciate the honesty.
It’s like 19,000 ppsqmi. Heavily Latino and heavily heavily undercounted. Probably over 20,000 ppsqmi. And until very recently very impoverished. Much denser than Boston overall- just not nearly as posh or trendy as Cambridge.
A ton of the dense More working class urban towns cities adjacent to Boston are virtually never discussed here. It’s downright eerie.
I'd say its because most people have never heard of these towns. Most visitors to Boston aren't going to Chelsea or similar places.
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