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Eh, it's actually more like 1/6th of the country lives in BosWash.
I know this forum is very Northeast-centric (something to which I obviously contribute), but the fact of the matter is the vast, vast majority of Americans know very little about the Northeast outside of the core large cities (and even then, popular knowledge is very limited to the popular core neighborhoods).
There's just a conglomeration of geography nerds on this forum. But "normal" people tend to be heavily focused on their resident area, within 100 miles or so.
If anyone has more nuanced or extensive of knowledge of a city/metro in which they're not a resident, it's because of the reason (geography nerdism) noted above, that they've lived in "X" area before, or they have a strong personal connection (family/friend lives or is from there).
This doesn't make sense to me. How can someone who is awesome at geography be considered a nerd? It is most definitely a top 1000 hot topic and I highlight it strongly in more Tinder profile.
Like others have said, it's all a matter of perspective. In the regular, average, everyday world Outside this forum, that perspective is EXTREMELY narrow.
Location: That star on your map in the middle of the East Coast, DMV
8,130 posts, read 7,581,348 times
Reputation: 5796
Quote:
Originally Posted by Fishtacos
50 miles is too many.
Changing the original post to say which city or metro has a large urban density, etc….would be an easier discussion.
Yea the OP picked a pretty arbitrary threshold, in lots of places we can cut the lines, or draw different borders however you like. Bottom line is the 10 most urban contiguous cities/metros/areas regardless of order are:
NYC
Chicago
LA
Miami
SF
Philadelphia
Boston
DC
Seattle
Baltimore
I don't think there's much of a question to be had here. This also isn't changing in our future or lifetimes.
Changing the original post to say which city or metro has a large urban density, etc….would be an easier discussion.
Quote:
Originally Posted by the resident09
Yea the OP picked a pretty arbitrary threshold, in lots of places we can cut the lines, or draw different borders however you like. Bottom line is the 10 most urban contiguous cities/metros/areas regardless of order are:
NYC
Chicago
LA
Miami
SF
Philadelphia
Boston
DC
Seattle
Baltimore
I don't think there's much of a question to be had here. This also isn't changing in our future or lifetimes.
I think setting thresholds like these are interesting as is stating it as contiguous. After all, we certainly already have topics that are comparisons of metropolitan areas as a whole. 50 square miles is interesting as it's about a 4 mile radius where you'd be walking were you in the center. 4 miles is long for some people, but it's very doable for most, so it's sort of an interesting arbitrary threshold in how that works out. It also let's you chunk out multiple parts of the denser metropolitan areas like so as I take another crack at this:
10 most urban contiguous 50 square miles of land that are non-overlapping with each other, and not insanely gerrymandered and the contiguous meaning being that there is not more than a ten minute / half mile walk from between a residence or publicly open business on one side versus another if going across freeways or bodies of water.
1. Manhattan with the Bronx excluding for the Fieldston area in the Northwest and the easternmost sections (basically, non-subway served sections)
2. Brooklyn excluding the southeastern section of Brooklyn that are more wetlands and SFH neighborhoods away from the subway
3. Queens excluding the suburban part of Northeastern Queens away from Flushing due to being less urban and the Rockaways due to not being contiguous
4. Chicago with the Loop and adjacent neighborhoods and then going south a little, west some and north a lot
5. Most of the city of San Francisco with some of Daly City
6. Philadelphia core of Center City, most of South Philadelphia, a large chunk of West Philadelphia and North Philadelphia
7. Much of Hudson County and some of the lower reaches of Bergen County on Bergen Neck peninsula in New Jersey that is south and east of I-95 excluding wetlands
8. Boston downtown core into densest parts of surrounding urban municipalities
9. Most of Central Los Angeles with a bit of South Los Angeles
10. Westside Los Angeles
11. Washington DC core spreading into some of the denser parts of the adjacent Maryland suburbs such as Silver Spring excluding Arlington and NOVA in general and Southeast Quadrant due to lack of being contiguous
12. Seattle core
13. Baltimore core
14. East Bay complex of mostly flatlands of Oakland and Berkeley
15. Honolulu core ?
Last edited by OyCrumbler; 01-11-2023 at 02:25 PM..
Reason: switched it back
Location: That star on your map in the middle of the East Coast, DMV
8,130 posts, read 7,581,348 times
Reputation: 5796
Quote:
Originally Posted by OyCrumbler
I think setting thresholds like these are interesting as is stating it as contiguous. After all, we certainly already have topics that are comparisons of metropolitan areas as a whole. 50 square miles is interesting as it's about a 4 mile radius where you'd be walking were you in the center. 4 miles is long for some people, but it's very doable for most, so it's sort of an interesting arbitrary threshold in how that works out. It also let's you chunk out multiple parts of the denser metropolitan areas like so (taking another, more explicit crack at this:
10 most urban contiguous 50 square miles of land that are non-overlapping with each other, and not insanely gerrymandered and the contiguous meaning being that there is not more than a ten minute / half mile walk from the last point of a residence and/or business if going across freeways or bodies of water.
1. Manhattan with the Bronx excluding for the Fieldston area in the Northwest and the easternmost sections (basically, non-subway served sections)
2. Brooklyn excluding the southeastern section of Brooklyn that are more wetlands and SFH neighborhoods away from the subway
3. Queens excluding the suburban part of Northeastern Queens away from Flushing due to being less urban and the Rockaways due to not being contiguous
4. Chicago with the Loop and adjacent neighborhoods and then going south a little, west some and north a lot
5. Most of the city of San Francisco with some of Daly City
6. Philadelphia core of Center City, most of South Philadelphia, a large chunk of West Philadelphia and North Philadelphia
7. Much of Hudson County and some of the lower reaches of Bergen County on Bergen Neck peninsula in New Jersey that is south and east of I-95 excluding wetlands
8. Boston downtown core into densest parts of surrounding urban municipalities
9. Most of Central Los Angeles with a bit of South Los Angeles
10. Westside Los Angeles
11. Washington DC core spreading mostly north through to Silver Spring excluding Arlington and Southeast Quadrant due to lack of being contiguous
12. Honolulu core
13. Seattle core
14. Baltimore core
15. East Bay complex of mostly flatlands of Oakland and Berkeley
It's just sketchy and not uniform if you ask me. All one needs to do is look at an overhead satelitte image.
I don't agree with a number of the rankings you have either. Seattle "core" over the Baltimore "core"? Baltimore is much more urban than Seattle in it's bones outside of downtown. If you are saying that all of San Francisco + Daly City is contiguous urbanity, then all of Baltimore city must be contiguous urbanity stretching out into Baltimore county. You're breaking DC up with EOTR/Southeast and Arlington, but not acknowledging contiguity into Maryland along the PG county border. I don't see how you can define "contiguous urbanity" with such discrepancies. If LA's contiguity is so vast that it encompasses multiple dense SFH neighborhoods, than so should other cities that stretch into their "suburbs".
It's just sketchy and not uniform if you ask me. All one needs to do is look at an overhead satelitte image.
I don't agree with a number of the rankings you have either. Seattle "core" over the Baltimore "core"? Baltimore is much more urban than Seattle in it's bones outside of downtown. If you are saying that all of San Francisco + Daly City is contiguous urbanity, then all of Baltimore city must be contiguous urbanity stretching out into Baltimore county. You're breaking DC up with EOTR/Southeast and Arlington, but not acknowledging contiguity into Maryland along the PG county border. I don't see how you can define "contiguous urbanity" with such discrepancies.
I guess the question would be how much snaking out do you allow for building up the core. I can understand that seeming to be too gerrymandered with Seattle where you can choose these large corridors that are heavily built up and therefore bringing up the score a lot, but it comes looking somewhat gerrymandered. I feel like there needs to be something else in there like "must be circumscribed within a 5 mile radius" or something like that in order to not have this get super silly. I do think even without getting really gerrymander-y, at the 50 square mile area, it's probably a difficult decision between current day Seattle and Baltimore. Seattle has a lot more peaks and valleys going on in different parts where you have dense urbanity and then SFH parts and then more dense urbanity. Baltimore's generally more consistent. On a 50 square mile basis, it's hard to pick one decisively over another so I put them as a tie of sorts. I do think it's quite possible though that at a not so gerrymandered 50 contiguous square mile land area basis, Seattle has more residents, daytime population, inhabitable square foot of interior space, shops, eateries, and jobs than Baltimore does.
I had edited to put Baltimore and Seattle tied, but thinking more on it, I don't think there's a good argument for 50 square contiguous miles going to Baltimore. There's just too many buildings destroyed leaving vacant lots or in severe disrepair at this moment, so this is a pretty hard argument to make especially since 50 square miles is about how much contiguous land area there is coming from downtown to up north and south and where much of the densest development in Seattle is. Seattle at 83 square miles of land area is already denser than Baltimore's 80 square miles of land area. Paring it down to what essentially be the densest part of both is much more likely to reward Seattle especially since that would certainly include all the major employment areas within the city which is also a far larger base than what Baltimore has. Yea, you see a boarded up rowhouse and then you see vacant lots and I think what's happening is my mind's filling up the absence of the expected rest of the row of homes and the life and bustle that it'd harbor, but these function more as phantom limbs than something actually there. I think looking at these things is misleading myself into believing these places are more urban than they really are at this point. There are still some very large expanses of very urban neighborhoods in Baltimore, but I think at this point, for 50 square mile or 80 square mile of contiguous land area, it goes to Seattle.
San Francisco and a part of Daly City are contiguous urbanity. SF also doesn't get to 50 square miles by itself so you sort of have to bring in Daly City as that's the only urban part that's contiguous with SF's urbanity. There's certainly more urban parts across the bay in Oakland and Berkeley among others, but I think that's a very hard argument to make for contiguous.
Last edited by OyCrumbler; 01-11-2023 at 02:35 PM..
Yea the OP picked a pretty arbitrary threshold, in lots of places we can cut the lines, or draw different borders however you like. Bottom line is the 10 most urban contiguous cities/metros/areas regardless of order are:
NYC
Chicago
LA
Miami
SF
Philadelphia
Boston
DC
Seattle
Baltimore
I don't think there's much of a question to be had here. This also isn't changing in our future or lifetimes.
Why would this not change in our lifetimes?
Seattle 40 years ago wouldn’t have been anywhere near the top 10, for example. Things can change.
Location: That star on your map in the middle of the East Coast, DMV
8,130 posts, read 7,581,348 times
Reputation: 5796
Quote:
Originally Posted by nadnerb
Why would this not change in our lifetimes?
Seattle 40 years ago wouldn’t have been anywhere near the top 10, for example. Things can change.
The movement of another city into the top 10 won't change in our life time. It doesn't mean other cities outside the top 10 won't heavily urbanize. I say what I said because the urban bones of these cities will not change, and they can only densify more structurally. What US city will urbanize to be more contiguously urban than these in the next two generations, with greater urban bones? Who has the urban DNA to replicate or better these? Do you care to nominate one?
Also this was Seattle in 1950. DT Seattle had good urban bones 70+ years ago.
Seattle 40 years ago wouldn’t have been anywhere near the top 10, for example. Things can change.
It's not impossible, but I would agree that that development patterns tend to be pretty entrenched.
In fact, the few metro areas that were becoming more urbanized/dense in and around their cores over the past decade or more already have the densest urban cores.
For example, this was taken from a NYTimes report from about 6 years ago when they analyzed housing unit estimates based on Census tracts in top metro areas:
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