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I would say Jacksonville is the most sprawling. If I'm not mistaken, it is the city proper with the largest land area, and the pop. density is just over 1000 people per sq. mile.
I would say Jacksonville is the most sprawling. If I'm not mistaken, it is the city proper with the largest land area, and the pop. density is just over 1000 people per sq. mile.
That's because the city and the county are consolidated. But you typically use metro areas to determine how sprawling a place is since city limits are so arbitrary.
I think if you total up the square mileage of the Orlando Metro area, you'd get quite a sprawling metro.
Adding up the populations of all 4 counties and you would get 2,054,574 people.
Orange Co, is 907 sq mi, Lake is 953, Osceola is 1322 and Seminole is 308 which makes 3490 sq miles you would get a avg pop density of 588 people per sq mile!
If you were to just take the population of Orlando which had a 2008 population of 230,519 people, divide by 93.5 sq miles and you would get 2466 people per square mile. still quite low IMO
Most won't care to admit their own city. However, I'll start it.
Boston. Sure, it's uber-urban at the core, but the suburbs are super low density and sprawl for miles. Because most of the towns just outside Boston started as independent rural communities long ago, there's a fight to keep them that way. In order to do that, zoning laws were enacted to make "minimum" lot sizes in order to preserve the "small town character" of these towns. Instead of higher density suburbs close to the city, the population is forced outward because the growth is such low density. Metro Boston now extends halfway across the state in a Westward direction towards Worcester, all the way North into Southern NH (inc. Portsmouth, Nashua and upto Manchester) and South into RI and towards Cape Cod. Metro Boston is about 1/3 the size of metro L.A. but covers nearly as much land.
Boston deserves credit for its urban core, but the suburbs are a sprawling, low density nightmare, though some do have nice, historic centers (Lexington, Concord, Hingham, Plymouth, Manchester etc).
Wow that's funny because Houston, Dallas, and Austin are going through almost the exact same thing right now, especially Austin. Burnet, the town my parents live in, is just north of Austin and the Austin metro spreading out that way fast. Many people in Burnet are fighting the growth tooth and nail but it's a loosing battle.
Sprawl has more to do with timing and opportunity than anything else. If given the proper opportunity to sprawl forever (not bound by natural boundaries like water or mountains), all American cities did. This has been a phenomenum since the end of WWII. Denser cities/metros or parts of them tend to be those areas that were built before WWII. But, even then, much of America's denser cores bled population as people fled to the burbs for decades.
Now that there's a renewed interest in moving back into more urban areas, those cities that have the housing stock and infrastructure are positioned to take advantage of it. Cities that were developed mainly since WWII have to actually develop their cores with housing and infrastructure.
As for the walkscore.com website that others have mentioned here, I think it's a good tool that needs to be taken with a grain of salt. Sure, the site tells us how far amenities are from specific addresses but it doesn't tell us if one has to cross a busy 6 lane boulevard or whether there is actually pedestrian friendly infrastucture. That is to say, has our environment been built for the automobile, the pedestrian or both? What's the balance? Walkscore.com gives one data point but it isn't a substitute for personal experience. However, it may be a good place to start.
It depends on your definition of sprawl, which is somewhat ambiguous. Acording to this definition LA has fewer characteristics of sprawl then most other US cities because of density, land use, lot size, lack of greenbelts etc. It covers a large area because it is just a big city with a lot of people. Urban sprawl - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
To me the biggest characteristic of sprawl is the "leap frogging" phenomenon where empty space seperates patches of develpment on the ourskirts of cities, which isn't found as much in sunbelt cities as it is in the big, older east coast cities.
The difference comes from their periods of development. Many of the newly developing cities in the Sunbelt are quite isolated. All suburbs surrounding these cities have also seen most of their development recently. Basing their development/infrastructure around the car means there is basically an invisible dot placed in the center of the city and everything just grows outwards from that point without any break in the fabric.
Older cities of the Northeast have been around for ~350 years at this point. Most infrastructure and development happened a long time ago. As a result there is a center city, several satellite cities, and several low density but well-established suburbs (The house I live in was built more than 20 years before Phoenix was incorporated). Since these suburbs are old, have their own character and their own unique history, they're usually reluctant to give way to the bulldozer and let massive new developments spread into their towns (which is also why many of the suburbs of cities like New York, Boston, and Philadelphia are very expensive).
Conversely, the center cities of the Sunbelt are promoting themselves as fast-growing areas...the surrounding suburbs aren't as established as the older East Coast cities and don't share their history, so they're more than happy to enjoy the population boom. I think that's why there is a difference in breeds when comparing the sprawl of the Sunbelt to that of the East Coast.
The difference comes from their periods of development. Many of the newly developing cities in the Sunbelt are quite isolated. All suburbs surrounding these cities have also seen most of their development recently. Basing their development/infrastructure around the car means there is basically an invisible dot placed in the center of the city and everything just grows outwards from that point without any break in the fabric.
Older cities of the Northeast have been around for ~350 years at this point. Most infrastructure and development happened a long time ago. As a result there is a center city, several satellite cities, and several low density but well-established suburbs (The house I live in was built more than 20 years before Phoenix was incorporated). Since these suburbs are old, have their own character and their own unique history, they're usually reluctant to give way to the bulldozer and let massive new developments spread into their towns (which is also why many of the suburbs of cities like New York, Boston, and Philadelphia are very expensive).
Conversely, the center cities of the Sunbelt are promoting themselves as fast-growing areas...the surrounding suburbs aren't as established as the older East Coast cities and don't share their history, so they're more than happy to enjoy the population boom. I think that's why there is a difference in breeds when comparing the sprawl of the Sunbelt to that of the East Coast.
I don't know about every city in the South, but I'm sure they aren't all alike and don't fit the mold that you describe above - and neither do the Northeastern cities. They are all different.
Most of Atlanta's suburbs predate the city of Atlanta. They aren't new, but much of the development is new...just as much of the development in Northeastern city suburbs is new as well. If you think that suburban development in the Northeast is "old" then you haven't been to any of those suburbs recently.
I don't know about every city in the South, but I'm sure they aren't all alike and don't fit the mold that you describe above - and neither do the Northeastern cities. They are all different.
Of course there are exceptions on both sides. I think the formula which I described applies more to Sunbelt cities West of the Mississippi.
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Most of Atlanta's suburbs predate the city of Atlanta. They aren't new, but much of the development is new...just as much of the development in Northeastern city suburbs is new as well.
There's definitely plenty of new development in the Northeastern cities, but it's often not done to the same degree as the Sunbelt cities who have seen most of their growth within the past 10-15 years.
Quote:
If you think that suburban development in the Northeast is "old" then you haven't been to any of those suburbs recently.
So being incorporated in 1636 isn't old? That's news to me. Like I said before, the house I live in was built in the mid-1800s. My friend's house was built in the late-1600s. I have several other friends who live in houses built pre-1900. It's very common in this area. I never said that there wasn't new development, or that there hasn't been a great deal of development since the 1800s. What I said was that these communities have been well-established for a long time. As a result, they're often more reluctant to allow bulldozers from coming in than other areas in the country.
Like I said before: I'm not saying that new development doesn't exist. However, it's not usually on the same scale as cities in the Sunbelt.
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