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- Public transit (existing infrastructure as well as growth) and accessibility to those stops
- Dense buildings (anywhere from duplexes to skyscrapers)
- Walkability
- Bike lanes
- Bus lanes
- Wide sidewalks
- Accessibility to public parks
- Zoning (mostly SFH? Excessive parking minimums?)
- Future growth
Seattle by almost all measures. Inside city limits (can do metro for some things if that's better):
--Transit, walking, and biking commute shares, 2019 ACS: Seattle 25.1/10.7/3.7%, Baltimore 15.4/6.6%/1.2%.
--Density, 2019: Seattle 8,973/sm, Baltimore 7,332/sm. Seattle did it over a slightly larger land area.
--Foreign born, 2019: Seattle 19.6%, Baltimore 7.3%.
--Size of downtown. Nobody really counts this in parallel, but Seattle's is two tiers above.
Baltimore's claim seems to be based entirely on townhouses being the common vernacular in many areas. But it still manages to be substantially less dense.
PS, there are no houses a mile from the Market, aside from the odd remnant. The first street full of houses is about 6,600 feet from the pig where Pike Place (the street) bends. Your radius needs to get to about 8,500 feet to really get significant numbers of houses, though you're also hitting significant density at that point.
Seattle by almost all measures. Inside city limits (can do metro for some things if that's better):
--Transit, walking, and biking commute shares, 2019 ACS: Seattle 25.1/10.7/3.7%, Baltimore 15.4/6.6%/1.2%.
--Density, 2019: Seattle 8,973/sm, Baltimore 7,332/sm. Seattle did it over a slightly larger land area.
--Foreign born, 2019: Seattle 19.6%, Baltimore 7.3%.
--Size of downtown. Nobody really counts this in parallel, but Seattle's is two tiers above.
Baltimore's claim seems to be based entirely on townhouses being the common vernacular in many areas. But it still manages to be substantially less dense.
PS, there are no houses a mile from the Market, aside from the odd remnant. The first street full of houses is about 6,600 feet from the pig where Pike Place (the street) bends. Your radius needs to get to about 8,500 feet to really get significant numbers of houses, though you're also hitting significant density at that point.
A lot of those measures are functional, not tangible.
When it comes to structurally density. The average distance of SFH’s in Seattle from Market Street is roughly ~1.5 miles which gives you an area of 7.07 sq. miles (water included). It’s virtually impossible to find a single SFH within a 3 mile radius of the Inner Harbor (Light & Pratt Street) or an area of 28.27 sq. miles (water included). Manhattan is 22.38 sq mi. for context.
Regarding population density both have almost identical populations within a 3 mile radius of their respective downtowns because of the above ^. Baltimore has roughly the same housing occupancy rate as it did at its peak population in 1950 when its was ~11k/sm, the difference now is the massive reduction in medium household size in the city hence its retraction by ~40% over the years.
I’m 100% on board with Seattle being the more urban city functionally. But I’d be hard pressed to find a convincing argument where Baltimore isn’t the more physically urban city and has the better bones to support dense living if it’s pop. ever rebounded.
Seattle has WAY more apartments. Don't those count?
Baltimore of course has a huge edge in "one-unit attached" at 50.9% of its inventory vs. 5.1% for Seattle in 2019. (Seattle also builds a lot of detached townhouses, which use fractions of former house lots, but that wouldn't narrow the gap much. Examples of recent construction.)
Baltimore also had an advantage in 2-9-unit buildings (multifamily), with 16.7% of inventory vs. Seattle's 11%.
But it only had 13.6% of its units in 20+ unit buildings, vs. 36.6% for Seattle.
Those large buildings are mostly in walkable, urban form, and grouped around transit. That's "structural density" too.
Seattle has WAY more apartments. Don't those count?
Baltimore of course has a huge edge in "one-unit attached" at 50.9% of its inventory vs. 5.1% for Seattle in 2019. (Seattle also builds a lot of detached townhouses, which use fractions of former house lots, but that wouldn't narrow the gap much. Examples of recent construction.)
Baltimore also had an advantage in 2-9-unit buildings (multifamily), with 16.7% of inventory vs. Seattle's 11%.
But it only had 13.6% of its units in 20+ unit buildings, vs. 36.6% for Seattle.
Those large buildings are mostly in walkable, urban form, and grouped around transit. That's "structural density" too.
Seattle at its peak is without a doubt more intensely developed than Baltimore for sure, but Baltimore’s sheer volume of rowhomes means its more uniformly urban over a vastly larger area of city scape, not just “pockets” around transit (generalizing here).
This is quality vs. quantity argument
Last edited by Joakim3; 04-16-2021 at 04:48 PM..
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