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First, suburbanites all drive their behemoth SUVs 10 miles to buy a gallon of milk and nothing more. (As if any of us have time to do THAT!) Then, when shown that is not the case, they're bad anyway, "desolate" and "sterile", but hey, "we all have different tastes". What cities are you talking about?
What several Northeastern posters don't understand is that the large "sunbelt" cities have dense centers and have annexed lots of land around them thus making it seem like they are spread out. If say Boston was to annex 500 sq miles of the surrounding area the new city limits would have a little less than 2 million people which would be less dense than say Houston. I know that Denver is kind of like this with a dense center and alot of areas on the fringes as well as open and undeveloped space that are not dense. 600,000 people in 153 sq miles is therefore misleading in Denver's case. Same goes for Houston, Dallas and Atlanta among others
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Originally Posted by Katiana
First, suburbanites all drive their behemoth SUVs 10 miles to buy a gallon of milk and nothing more. (As if any of us have time to do THAT!) Then, when shown that is not the case, they're bad anyway, "desolate" and "sterile", but hey, "we all have different tastes". What cities are you talking about?
I don't think it's the suburbs if you have to drive 10 miles to get a gallon of milk That's awfully far. I bought a house on Long Island, about 15 miles outside NYC, and I can walk about 5 minutes to get a gallon of milk. But then again, many people who see Long Island think it's more of a city than suburbs (depending where they're from).
San Diego does have good density in the inner neighborhoods like Gaslamp, City Heights, Kensington etc. But the city limits also cover areas to the North like La Jolla and aroud Miramar marine station which are suburban. Those Northern areas are rather like outside 610 here in Houston. There are also many parks that are included in the city area (like here also) that diminish the people per sq mile
I don't think it's the suburbs if you have to drive 10 miles to get a gallon of milk That's awfully far. I bought a house on Long Island, about 15 miles outside NYC, and I can walk about 5 minutes to get a gallon of milk. But then again, many people who see Long Island think it's more of a city than suburbs (depending where they're from).
Well, some people think that. There was a poster on the Denver forum who was constantly saying that; that's why I did that poll. You're right, in a sense. Most of us "suburbanites" live in urban areas that while not obtaining the density of city centers, are not isolated from the rest of civilization. Our kids can generally walk to school. There are public parks to wak to. And so on.
San Francisco's population is now 842,625 according to the California State Department of Finance, which would make The City's population density per square mile 17,928
similar here.. about 50% of the city limits are "seawater" and swamp so you have places where there maybe 0-5 people in an entire zip code. The true density should fall under or around Miami somewhere
Yeah, you don't think Miami (and Chicago and NYC) has large areas where people don't live too? What about Central Park? What about Grant Park, the Chicago river, the vast areas of factories and warehouses? If you want to cherry pick statistics, you can always find neighborhoods and subsections of the city with higher or lower areas of density. The relevant point is how much of your city's population lives in a dense walkable neighborhood. In Chicago, a significant fraction (probably more than a third) lives on less than one fifth of the land area. There are multiple, contiguous square miles (not just a few blocks here or there) with population densities exceeding 20,000 people/sq mile (see the pictures by Chicago60614.)
NOTE: I'm not making a value judgement whether high density is good or bad. I'm just pointing out the significant difference, even greater than reflected in "average population density" numbers, between pre-auto and post-auto cities.
^ yeah, I figured it out and there are dozens of square miles of Chicago that are either industrial, the airports (huge land areas) or the massive open areas on the far south side of the city.
Most people live in neighborhoods that are far far denser than 12,000 per square mile.
I certainly wasn't saying people CAN'T get a gallon of milk in non-dense cities, I was just saying I like having a critical mass of stores, restaurants and bars all within a 5 minute walk. That's very hard to find in the US these days.
What several Northeastern posters don't understand is that the large "sunbelt" cities have dense centers and have annexed lots of land around them thus making it seem like they are spread out. If say Boston was to annex 500 sq miles of the surrounding area the new city limits would have a little less than 2 million people which would be less dense than say Houston. I know that Denver is kind of like this with a dense center and alot of areas on the fringes as well as open and undeveloped space that are not dense. 600,000 people in 153 sq miles is therefore misleading in Denver's case. Same goes for Houston, Dallas and Atlanta among others
As I've already mentioned, I believe population density is irrelevant. Many people who like density like the aesthetic of condensed and connected structures and neighborhoods. As I said earlier, you really only find this NYC, Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington DC, San Francisco, Pittsburgh, New Orleans, Cincinnati, and St. Louis--these are the truly dense cities. Comparing the density of Houston to that of Boston is absurd, show me something in Houston that looks like this:
One way to get a cursory idea of density is to look at the satellite images on google maps. You can get a good idea just looking at the street grids and the housing stock in the central neighborhoods.
Thanks for the pics. Those are very interesting neighborhoods.
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That's awfully far. I bought a house on Long Island, about 15 miles outside NYC, and I can walk about 5 minutes to get a gallon of milk. But then again, many people who see Long Island think it's more of a city than suburbs (depending where they're from).
Yet I still like density
