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It is, but not all of the CSA is in the Bay Area urban ring.
Well yea some cities are built where there are mountain ranges, it is hard for urban areas to be 100% continuous over a mountain. To say that Livermore or Tracy has nothing to do with San Francisco just because they aren't physically connected would be kind of crazy. San Francisco gets commuters from VERY far out reaches, even all the way to Sacramento. It really isn't anything crazy. Just measure the distance from say Downtown Sacramento to Downtown San Francisco and you'll find it is closer than Downtown Chicago to Downtown Milwaukee (which Milwaukee people always like to think is very connected with Chicago). Disclaimer though, Sacramento is not in the CSA, but just giving a distance-wise example). It is a massive mega-region built around the core cities of SF, Oak, and SJ.
Urbanized area has a density minimum, so large swaths of uninhibited land are likely omitted. The only misleading aspect with L.A. coming first in density is that it has a smaller population than New York--12.2 million to 18.3 million.
If you cut NY down to 12.2 million, it would almost certainly have a higher density than Los Angeles.
Then again, Demographia also has Los Angeles with a higher density than New York, with a significantly larger population.
Los Angeles "Urban Area": 15 million, 6,200 ppsm
New York Urbanized Area: 18.3 million, 5,400 ppsm
If you cut New York down to 15 million, would it have a higher density than L.A.? Maybe, but not by much. These are the two largest, densest metros by a clear margin.
My main issue with weighted density is that it makes the Tri-State area look more dense than it actually is. Yeah, that sounds loaded, but hear me out. The average resident does not live at 31,000 ppsm. The city is dense, but the suburbs are not, yet this isn't reflected in Austin Contrarian's numbers. In this sense, UA density is more accurate--you want the 18 mil population? Then you have to take the lower density with it.
I follow you Ray but not sure it totally makes sense with theshrunken number NYC gets to a high weighted density because it has a huge core population that is VERY dense (even by standard density)
Lets accumulate from the core
Including the continuos counties and just pure standard density combining NYC (5 Borroughs) Hudson, Bergen and Essex Counties in NJ, Yonkers in NY and Nassau County in NY State you get 12.2 Million people in 1,179 sq miles and a density of 10,343 ppsm as standard density. exlcude Nassua (highly suburban in nature and Essex (also mostly ver suburban) and you get 10.2 Million in 600 sq miles (the size of Houston today) with a density of 16.5K ppsm
I think the contrairian is probably pretty accurate quite honestly
I follow you Ray but not sure it totally makes sense with theshrunken number NYC gets to a high weighted density because it has a huge core population that is VERY dense (even by standard density)
Lets accumulate from the core
Including the continuos counties and just pure standard density combining NYC (5 Borroughs) Hudson, Bergen and Essex Counties in NJ, Yonkers in NY and Nassau County in NY State you get 12.2 Million people in 1,179 sq miles and a density of 10,343 ppsm as standard density. exlcude Nassua (highly suburban in nature and Essex (also mostly ver suburban) and you get 10.2 Million in 600 sq miles (the size of Houston today) with a density of 16.5K ppsm
I think the contrairian is probably pretty accurate quite honestly
Weighted density for the entire NY UA is skewed because the city limits (with a weighted density over 65,000 ppsm!) are so dense. Your numbers highlight this--10.2 million residents live in 600 sq miles. That means the other 8.1 million residents live in 2850 sq miles, for a standard density below 2,900 ppsm. So when ones says the average Tri-State resident lives at 31,000 ppsm, that's the city limits skewing the number up. Outside of the four main boroughs and a few areas scattered about, your typical tri-state actually lives at a really low density.
You can see how the density drops noticeably when you start adding suburban Long Island to the mix. The densest 600 contiguous sq miles in L.A. have a density in the 10,000 ppsm range. Using your numbers, New York at 600 sq miles is roughly 66% more dense. At 12.2 million residents, New York is now only 32% more dense. You can see how L.A. begins to catch up. According to demographia, at 15 million residents, Los Angeles has a density of 6200 ppsm. New York might still be more dense, but percentage-wise it will be by small margin.
So when ones says the average Tri-State resident lives at 31,000 ppsm, that's the city limits skewing the number up.
That's not quite what weighted density tells you, a median census tract density (with census tracts sorted by population) would do a better job telling you that. The density contrast in NYC is so extreme, the weighted density would change little if half the metro population lived at density of 0, and the rest were at NYC-level densities. Which is more or less the case: the weighted density of NYC is about 60,000, for the entire urban area (not the Tri-State Area, Fairfield County CT is a separate urban area because of not enough commute connection) the weighted density is 31,000. Urban area has a population of 18 million, city 8 million, so if the rest of the urban area had a density of 0, weighted density would be 26,700.
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Outside of the four main boroughs and a few areas scattered about, your typical tri-state actually lives at a really low density.
Compared to the four main boroughs, the rest of the urban area is at low density. Compared to typical American suburbs, maybe somewhat denser. The inner suburbs are similarly skewed, with a few (often rich or just a few people on the edge of the urban area) using up lots of land. Nassau County has a weighted density of somewhat over 7000 (same as Denver!), but an overall average density of 4600 per square mile. Staten Island has a weighted density of 13,000, dense for what's often considered typical suburbia.
Even compared to LA suburbs, NYC suburbs aren't drastically lower. Here's a graph of population living in census tracts above X density. US numbers are 2010 urban areas:
As you can see, the lower density tracts of NYC's urban area are somewhat lower density than LA, but more similar to LA than say, Chicago. The low average density of NYC mainly comes from about 10% of residents which live in tracts less than 2000 per square mile. A few residents living in low density can eat up a lot of land, the converse of the other end of NYC: a small amount of land at very high densities can hold lots of people. Off topic, but in case of any confusion, the lower density tracts of the London Urban Area are underestimated since they include parks and farmlnad.
Also, the area under the curve for each urban area is the weighted density. It's clear the highest densities affect the weighted density much more once you convert the x-axis to a linear scale (the above graph is a log graph). Since the y-axis is in %, mathematically when computing the area, it's actually from 0 to 1 not 0 to 100.
What about the Miami metro? 70% of the metro is uninhabitable...
As it should be. Who in the right mind would every want to build neighborhoods or towns right in the Everglades. That would be the worst thing the Miami area could ever do when it comes to development.
As it should be. Who in the right mind would every want to build neighborhoods or towns right in the Everglades. That would be the worst thing the Miami area could ever do when it comes to development.
My point exactly I just feel like metro density is not a true representation. the metro might be 7000 square miles, but people only call about 2000 miles of it home. That is why in Miami they are building up because it is very limited in ways of expansion.
My point exactly I just feel like metro density is not a true representation. the metro might be 7000 square miles, but people only call about 2000 miles of it home. That is why in Miami they are building up because it is very limited in ways of expansion.
In the case of MiamiDade County, it has about 2.6 million people in just 500 square miles of land. I agree that Miami doesn't get the visibility it should as one of America's most densely populated areas.
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