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This only mainly happens with Bridgeport area, I agree, but that's a difference of what <2 million people? I disagree about including the entirety of south New Jersey; that area is widely interspersed with rural communities, and not quite physically contiguous despite a chain of splattering's of SFH development on farmland. Whereas with LA its a difference of ~5 million people; there is literally no more rural fringe in between the core areas I mentioned, whereas that isn't really the case with NY's urban area sans Bridgeport.
If we're merging NY and Philly, we might as well do so with LA and SD. The Census Bureau itself merges Mission Viejo with San Diego, but Mission Viejo is actually tied to LA. Not to mention the I-15 corridor which has a similar degree of suburban interspersion (if not more intense) as central Jersey.
I think someone else mentioned this, but doesn't Camp Pendleton get in the way? Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst (former Fort Dix, McGuire AFB and Lakehurst Naval Air Station) is the New York-Philly analog, and I believe the three disparate tracts put together still take up less space than Camp Pendleton — and they're separate in such a way that urban or semi-urban development runs between them, particularly along the corridor where US 1 and the New Jersey Turnpike run.
Mercer County (Trenton MSA) is where the two regions overlap: it's in the New York CSA and the Philadelphia DMA (media market). I haven't seen a map showing where the urbanized areas in each are located, so don't know how big or small the non-urbanized patches between them are. (It looks like the map you posted got deleted after OyCrumbler responded to your post, maybe because it was on a competing urban data site, a C-D no-no.)
Quote:
Originally Posted by xqcdblh456
Sorry, I meant central Jersey. For some reason my mind thought Jersey stopped south of the Trenton river but that's obviously wrong.
Agreed about the Bay Area though, that is the most ridiculous classification on the map. Regarding Mission Viejo, there shouldn't have been gap in the first place on the map. By 2010, it was already contiguous and developed with offices.
"Trenton river"?
There's a stream called Assupink Creek that splits the New Jersey capital in two, but the only river flowing past Trenton forms the Pennsylvania-New Jersey state line.
The historic dividing line between North and South Jersey (in colonial times, East and West Jersey) is a surveyor's line that forms today's Burlington-Ocean county line. Continue this line on its nortwhesterly path and it splits Mercer County neatly in two right around Princeton.
Bur the poster who pointed out South Jersey's less urbanized character is correct. The Delaware River formed a significant barrier to South Jersey's urbanization, and even though there were older communities there (Haddonfield, Moorestosn, Merchantville, Woodbury, Oaklyn...) where people caught trains headed to Camden, where they could take ferries across the Delaware, it wasn't until that river was bridged at Phladelphia in 1925 (Tacony-Palmyra Bridge) and 1926 (Ben Franklin, nee Delaware River, Bridge) that suburbanization took off in earnest.
Most of New Jersey's farmland also lies in the southern part of the state, and a good chunk of that land also lies in the Pinelands National Preserve, which pretty much bars development now between the outskirts of Atlantic and Ocean cities and roughly Williamstown. The heavily developed South Jersey seashore, then, becomes a separate urban area all its own.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Joakim3
Western cities are denser on a MSA/UA level
East Coast cities tend to be denser in the city proper with more sprawled suburbs.
18Montclair (did you once live in North Jersey? Your handle suggests that) nailed it in this regard.
Most of the cities of the Noretheast began suburbanizing as railroads extended outward from them in the mid-19th century. Communities sprang up around the railroad stations, and the transportation technology of the time guaranteed they would develop in the fairly dense pattern of most small towns as well as big cities of the time. But the land further away from the stations remained rural, and often still consisted of large farm holdings that got subdivided into estates that were almost as large. Thus suburbs around New York, Boston, Philadelphia and Baltimore are not "sprawly" in the sense the term is usually used, though they do sprawl more than their West Coast counterparts. Rather, they're "clumpy," with nodes of high density (in most cases higher than the West Coast standard) surrounded by thousands of acres of much lower density (in all cases lower than the West Coast standard, often much lower).
California, even the Bay Area, suburbanized largely after the automobile had been introduced, but both the terrain and the presence (or absence) of water (and maybe the zoning rules too) steered development in a more uniform — and more uniformly dense — direction.
I think someone else mentioned this, but doesn't Camp Pendleton get in the way? Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst (former Fort Dix, McGuire AFB and Lakehurst Naval Air Station) is the New York-Philly analog, and I believe the three disparate tracts put together still take up less space than Camp Pendleton — and they're separate in such a way that urban or semi-urban development runs between them, particularly along the corridor where US 1 and the New Jersey Turnpike run.
Mercer County (Trenton MSA) is where the two regions overlap: it's in the New York CSA and the Philadelphia DMA (media market). I haven't seen a map showing where the urbanized areas in each are located, so don't know how big or small the non-urbanized patches between them are. (It looks like the map you posted got deleted after OyCrumbler responded to your post, maybe because it was on a competing urban data site, a C-D no-no.)
"Trenton river"?
There's a stream called Assupink Creek that splits the New Jersey capital in two, but the only river flowing past Trenton forms the Pennsylvania-New Jersey state line.
The historic dividing line between North and South Jersey (in colonial times, East and West Jersey) is a surveyor's line that forms today's Burlington-Ocean county line. Continue this line on its nortwhesterly path and it splits Mercer County neatly in two right around Princeton.
Bur the poster who pointed out South Jersey's less urbanized character is correct. The Delaware River formed a significant barrier to South Jersey's urbanization, and even though there were older communities there (Haddonfield, Moorestosn, Merchantville, Woodbury, Oaklyn...) where people caught trains headed to Camden, where they could take ferries across the Delaware, it wasn't until that river was bridged at Phladelphia in 1925 (Tacony-Palmyra Bridge) and 1926 (Ben Franklin, nee Delaware River, Bridge) that suburbanization took off in earnest.
Most of New Jersey's farmland also lies in the southern part of the state, and a good chunk of that land also lies in the Pinelands National Preserve, which pretty much bars development now between the outskirts of Atlantic and Ocean cities and roughly Williamstown. The heavily developed South Jersey seashore, then, becomes a separate urban area all its own.
18Montclair (did you once live in North Jersey? Your handle suggests that) nailed it in this regard.
Most of the cities of the Noretheast began suburbanizing as railroads extended outward from them in the mid-19th century. Communities sprang up around the railroad stations, and the transportation technology of the time guaranteed they would develop in the fairly dense pattern of most small towns as well as big cities of the time. But the land further away from the stations remained rural, and often still consisted of large farm holdings that got subdivided into estates that were almost as large. Thus suburbs around New York, Boston, Philadelphia and Baltimore are not "sprawly" in the sense the term is usually used, though they do sprawl more than their West Coast counterparts. Rather, they're "clumpy," with nodes of high density (in most cases higher than the West Coast standard) surrounded by thousands of acres of much lower density (in all cases lower than the West Coast standard, often much lower).
California, even the Bay Area, suburbanized largely after the automobile had been introduced, but both the terrain and the presence (or absence) of water (and maybe the zoning rules too) steered development in a more uniform — and more uniformly dense — direction.
Well Camp Pendleton doesn't stretch all the way inland; that's why sprawl is (for better or worse) making its way up I-15 from Escondidio to Temecula, especially since SoCal doesn't do artificial urban growth boundaries as much as the Bay Area or Portland does. Especially in the past decade, where they approved and started construction on a bunch of new housing tract developments in the Pala Area and North San Diego County along the I-15 corridor, and as such the urbanization boundaries between San Diego and LA have been blurring more and more along this corridor, just like it has been with New York and Philly. Now, I agree that the degree of shared commuters is stronger between NY and Philly vs LA and SD; the former have a shared commuter shed of ~2 million people give or take, while the latter have shared commuter shed of at most 700K people. Of course, this doesn't mean either NY-Philly or LA-SD city pairs should be classified as single whole metros, because that's still ridiculous; there's a reason why the megalopolis classification exists, and both resemble the latter far more than the former.
Actually meant Delaware River; the river that splits Trenton from Pennsylvania.
Last edited by xqcdblh456; 01-18-2022 at 08:44 AM..
If we're merging NY and Philly, we might as well do so with LA and SD. The Census Bureau itself merges Mission Viejo with San Diego, but Mission Viejo is actually tied to LA. Not to mention the I-15 corridor which has a similar degree of suburban interspersion (if not more intense) as central Jersey.
Quote:
Originally Posted by MarketStEl
I think someone else mentioned this, but doesn't Camp Pendleton get in the way?
Yes, it does. Merging Mission Viejo with San Diego is objectively wrong. Mission Viejo is in Orange County, in the LA metro area. The vast emptiness of Camp Pendleton separates Orange County and San Diego.
There was very little actual development between Mission Viejo and San Juan Capistrano and then San Clemente except directly along the 5 freeway, and also along Pacific Coast Highway, until quite recently. It's only in the last decade or so that many houses have been built in those hills.
East Coast cities tend to be denser in the city proper with more sprawled suburbs.
While what you say here is undoubtedly true, the reason isn't so much that suburbs in the east "sprawled" by design. In fact, these areas were never meant to be suburbs - they were a collection of small towns & villages that "became" suburbs when the highways were built in the 60's.
The small town that I grew up in in MA, now included in the Boston MSA, was established in the 1700's. It was originally a small hamlet in the woods, and houses were built around large lots, some farmland (what's left of them now mainly suppliers for bougie farm-to-table restaurants) and a small town center w/ town green, a church or two, etc. When the highways came in the 50's & 60's, commuters were created and people started carving out land where they could for new housing. But there wasn't much that wasn't already spoken for (and people who already owned the land weren't much interested in dividing it up for housing developments), so the town could never look like a purpose-built suburb that maximizes efficiency for funneling commuters into a center city (aka, sunbelt suburbs that sprung up after the highways were built).
Anyway, I'm getting a bit off track here, but effectively the reason that the cities in the west have less dense cores, and more dense suburbs, has 100% to do with when they were developed. Moving from New England to Dallas was a fascinating history lesson for me as they are such fundamentally different places in terms of their evolution.
While what you say here is undoubtedly true, the reason isn't so much that suburbs in the east "sprawled" by design. In fact, these areas were never meant to be suburbs - they were a collection of small towns & villages that "became" suburbs when the highways were built in the 60's.
Valid point. This is in addition to the fact that land preservation "back East" is simply a much more historically rooted and a common land-use practice, which in many ways admittedly "forces" more sprawl by precluding more dense, uninterrupted development, as is standard "out West."
The fact that many metropolitan East Coast towns were settled at earlier times that long preceded post-war development also creates an interesting dynamic: a much larger number of densely-settled suburban hubs/downtown areas (in particular, those that came of age in during rail line "booms") that exist in greater numbers than out West, despite East Coast suburbia being less dense overall (again, the average is dragged down by much more open space and generally much larger subdivision lot sizes).
Yes, it does. Merging Mission Viejo with San Diego is objectively wrong. Mission Viejo is in Orange County, in the LA metro area. The vast emptiness of Camp Pendleton separates Orange County and San Diego.
There was very little actual development between Mission Viejo and San Juan Capistrano and then San Clemente except directly along the 5 freeway, and also along Pacific Coast Highway, until quite recently. It's only in the last decade or so that many houses have been built in those hills.
It's crazy how fast Irvine has been growing in the 2010's. It added about 100,000 new residents during the last decade. But even still, I disagree with the assertion Mission Viejo was separate from the bulk of the LA urbanized area in 2010. This is what the area looked like in December 2009:
Versus 2021:
The area was already developed by 2009, it just merely got more intensely developed in the ensuing decade.
It's crazy how fast Irvine has been growing in the 2010's. It added about 100,000 new residents during the last decade. But even still, I disagree with the assertion Mission Viejo was separate from the bulk of the LA urbanized area in 2010. This is what the area looked like in December 2009:
Versus 2021:
The area was already developed by 2009, it just merely got more intensely developed in the ensuing decade.
Look, I've lived there (in a city adjacent to Mission Viejo) since 1996. Of course Irvine was already developed in 2009! You won't get any arguments from me that from Mission Viejo clear up through LA has been one continuous developed area since well before 2010.
I do remember though that when we used to drive from north OC down to Laguna Beach to visit my grandmother, what is now Irvine was mostly rolling hills and open fields with eucalyptus windbreaks. This was in the 1970s.
By the way, to each his own, but I disagree with the people who have implied that this must be a frightful place to live in. It has its compensations both in amenities and natural beauty. Today I'll hop in my car and in 20 minutes, be at the Costco in the lower center of the the photo above. On the weekend, I was on the beach in Laguna. It took 30 minutes to get there. Yesterday, I hopped on my bike, and in 20 minutes ride straight out the door, was on top of a hill looking at this view:
It's crazy how fast Irvine has been growing in the 2010's. It added about 100,000 new residents during the last decade. But even still, I disagree with the assertion Mission Viejo was separate from the bulk of the LA urbanized area in 2010. This is what the area looked like in December 2009:
Versus 2021:
The area was already developed by 2009, it just merely got more intensely developed in the ensuing decade.
If I'm not mistaken, the way urban area is defined is via contiguous census tracts at a certain population density. This isn't a definition specific to California, but the entire US. As you can see from your images, it was undeveloped hillside, the remnants of the air force base, and Irvine Spectrum Center and adjacent *commercial* strips separating out the two so it's pretty apparent why they weren't part of the same urban area in the 2010 census. I think they are contiguous now for the 2020 census, or if they aren't, they just missed it for when the census taken as the development is and has been ongoing. There were a couple of paths there which is redevelopment of the base and development of the hillsides (both happening) or mixed-use redevelopment of the Irvine Spectrum Center and adjacent commercial and industrial strips.
Also, at 43% living in census tracts that are 10k+ ppsm, SFs metro population density also extends proportionally much farther out from downtown than really anywhere in the country except NY and LA.
2020 MSAs by Percentage of Population, 10,000+ Per Square Mile
58.0% New York: 11,694,534
50.0% Los Angeles: 6,611,283
43.6% San Francisco: 2,073,127
38.8% Honolulu: 395,854
36.0% San Jose: 720,560
29.3% Boston: 1,448,764
27.1% Chicago: 2,614,012
26.4% Salinas: 116,532
25.3% Philadelphia: 1,580,169
24.7% San Diego: 816,530
23.2% Santa Barbara: 104,916
22.7% Miami: 1,398,475
19.5% Las Vegas: 441,510
19.2% Washington: 1,230,663
18.0% Oxnard: 152,811
18.0% Trenton: 70,272
17.9% Providence: 301,925
17.7% State College: 28,622
17.5% Bridgeport: 168,397
15.9% Santa Cruz: 43,412
14.3% Milwaukee: 226,941
14.2% Reading: 61,836
13.1% Baltimore: 375,152
13.1% Buffalo: 153,098
12.5% Seattle: 505,840
Eh not the best measure. For instance, Seattle MSA includes Mount Rainier National Park and most of the Cascades, areas that are prohibited from being built on based on the urban growth boundary.
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