Dense in the future?
 

What are some cities that are sprawlsville today that you think stand a good chance of being either dense or at least a lot more dense than today? I'll say in about 20-40 years. Hopefully this hasn't been discussed too often and isn't closed, lol.

L.A. is obviously going to continue to grow up, since it doesn't have much room to grow out anymore.

I could see Austin grow dense but I'm not familiar enough with it.

Charlotte is already investing in rail transit, and will likely densify.

Lastly, I would bank on the big Rust Belt cities recovering density over the next half century.

The longest commutes most people seem to tolerate are about 45 minutes to an hour.

The mode of transportation does not matter and density does not matter thats about the limit people land on. So until a faster mode of transportation than trains and cars can get you from the farthest Exurb to your job they are about as spread out as they are going to get.

Now this does get a little warped as major Metro areas have multiple employment hubs and of course outliers of people willing to travel outrageous lengths to get their little slice of suburban (or rural) bliss. But unless its a smaller city with lots of room to expand outward like Boise or Odessa-Midland, id expect most of the top cities in america to continue their current trend towards more density.

Of course there is a cultural component too, from 1940-(even now in many places) getting your own little house in the suburbs was a big cultural push, id never discount a turn against urbanism like we saw after WW2 happening again sometime in the future.

But, things will still change a lot with the growing prevalence of working from home with modern communication tech which could see really odd changes in living patterns. There is no reason why you cant be a day trader or independent tech contractor working from a small town in Montana as long as you have a good internet connection and are willing to be up early. etc.

And of course if we get Jetsons flying cars, Futurama people tubes or teleporters then all bets on built form are off.

i always feel like columbus is due for some sister city austin-style densifying downtown some day.

and speaking of ohio downtown's, cleveland is on deck for a huge downtown densification office project, but as with everything clevelandy there is also a chance it could all fall apart (new sherwin-williams hq). we'll see.

Portland is about to go crazy. I think were going to see a completely new east side skyline in 10 years. Downtown is getting some tower infill too.

The Greater Toronto Area greenbelt means the cities around Toronto can only grow upward as we are seeing now.
So places like Vaughan and Mississauga, which both have 3 x 500 footers under construction, will continue to get denser.

I was going to mention Toronto's post-war sprawlburbs as a good example. Most of them are fully built out at this point, but still rapidly growing - and as a result almost all of them are creating new high-rise city centres, building LRT & BRT, redeveloping shopping malls, and building TODs around new high-frequency commuter rail stations.



Mississauga is the most notable - in the 60s/70 its city centre looked like this:

http://www.mississauga.ca/file/COM/hf0164la.jpg
http://www.mississauga.ca/portal/res...%3Fstart%3D181


Now:

https://urbantoronto.ca/forum/attach...21-jpg.190369/
https://urbantoronto.ca/forum/thread...20755/page-103


And here's the longer term plan to continue filling it in, including upgrading the current BRT to LRT:

https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/Dw...VDxUIZ1W5l9GnY

https://i.imgur.com/a5Y8uPm.jpg



Also in Mississauga is the Lakeview Village redevelopment, which will add 8,000 residential units & 4,000 jobs:

http://urbantoronto.ca/sites/default...492-117005.png

http://urbantoronto.ca/sites/default...492-116995.png

http://urbantoronto.ca/sites/default...492-117000.png

http://urbantoronto.ca/sites/default...492-117002.png

http://urbantoronto.ca/sites/default...492-117001.png




Here's the long-term vision for Brampton. What's currently a sprawling industrial estate:

https://i.imgur.com/C71caiH.png


Is planned to transform into this over the next few decades:

https://i.cbc.ca/1.4651546.152570657...n-brampton.png

https://i.cbc.ca/1.4651576.152570711...-boulevard.png
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toron...sion-1.4651520




Vaughan's city centre, which is in the process of developing a post-war industrial / big box wasteland around a new subway extension & BRT:

https://blog.condonow.com/wp-content.../VMCGoogle.jpg

https://blog.condonow.com/wp-content...VMOverview.jpg
https://www.century21.ca/roger.towns...politan_Centre




Langstaff Gateway redevelopment in Markham, which would add 15,000 residential units (plus commercial) around a commuter rail station:

https://www.calthorpe.com/sites/defa...10_%281%29.jpg

https://www.calthorpe.com/sites/defa...-09%29-v01.jpg




It's also art of the larger Richmond Hill/Langstaff Gateway Urban Growth Centre, congruent with Richmond Hill's new city centre:

https://i.imgur.com/N1mO4ns.png

https://i.imgur.com/qBY66HQ.png
http://mshplan.ca/Project%20Sheet_Ri...%20Gateway.pdf




Markham's other city centre:

https://downtownmarkham.ca/wp-conten...st-facts-2.jpg




Still suburban, but at least they'll be dense. :shrug:

The high rises mixed in with fields just screams CHINA to me.

That’s who’s funding it lol

It’s the Vancouver/Miami model of growth

In the us, I would say Houston, Dallas will show the greatest densification. Not with high rises, more like big 6-7 story midrises wrapped around parking, with the odd inner loop high rise

High rises nodes in currently low rise edge cities would include Tyson’s, new Rochelle, Bellevue, maybe north Austin, east Portland downtown (Lloyd center) , parts of queens, jersey city. Nimbyism will probably keep more redevelopment core focused and brownfield elsewhere (ie Chicago and sf)

Houston and Dallas??? What?

Where are you getting this from exactly?

LA will have the most and it's been happening with large 5-7 story mixed use buildings everywhere.

I think it's going to start adding 15-20 story buildings in the same fashion, as well as keep adding the 5-7 mixed use stuff.
Even parts of south los angeles and the Valley are adding these buildings all over the place.

Downtown will continue adding 40-60 story buildings. Century City, Hollywood and Koreatown, Wilshire, will likely add a ton of 30-40 story buildings (already planned/u/c)

Probably given 20-40 years per the OP. They present two different versions of future density: DFW has a midwestern feeling with it's orderly development and clean look and Houston's libertarian roots come out in it's haphazard, a "mother's type of love" look. Both cities have the bones to support a dense multi nodal metropolis.

However, Houston does need to figure out it's future in order to densify... Are they going to get very serious about flooding and are they going to get very serious about investing in a plan to development new industries. Houston has been getting more involved in its local public university which is not among the state's flagship.

Western Metros for sure.

I know when I went to LA in 2013 I didn't recognize it. Previous to that the last time I was there was in 1994! Nearly 7 years later I'm sure the city has changed yet some more.

Toronto's urban development patterns/strategies are unlike anything else in the developed world. That parcel situated between the highway and cemetery... speechless. Propose anything like that in LA (or even OC), and the NIMBYs will be sure to stymie it... thank goodness.

You can thank the Ontario government for that, The province has pretty much told all the GTA cities that they are going to get denser whether they want to or not. but even with the heavy hand of the province, getting skyscrapers built in Toronto is not a smooth process taking many years and about 1/3 of the cost to build is from fees and taxes.

A full unrestrained GTA would look like Asian cities with highrises replaces the miles of single-family homes in the region. The current process will take longer and be more expensive for home-owners but as long as the greenbelt holds the non-stop construction will continue

You may think that but the real reason is that Vancouver and Toronto don't have any more land to build out with and have to build up to house their fast-growing populations

Houston. Already in 2019 nobody in North America is converting single-family zones into dense neighborhoods faster than Houston. They still have to make it less car-oriented, but the infill is impressive and different than what other cities are seeing.

The future:

https://live.staticflickr.com/912/41...054f7e57_b.jpg

Yeah Houston and Dallas. See post above. Both densifying pretty rapidly and both were heavily low density sleepy neighborhoods well into city centers. There's parts of them that will remain sprawling and low density but mostly outside the loop in Houston's case. For now.

I like the fact that Toronto builds fast. I guess they don't have a "NIMBY" problem. Wish L.A. could build as fast. We need more affordable housing!

Yea, the city's mixed use developments have exploded in the past 5 years or so. And there's more foot traffic as a result. And it's still in the early stages of what it's going to be. Even the "sleepy" areas like Palms and Mar Vista are changing fast. West Holllywood, North Hollywood, arts district, Hollywood, Santa Monica, Koreatown South park, Historic core have probably seen the biggest changes for development in last 7 years. I lived in North Hollywood 3 years ago and its changed alot since then.

More than Seattle, Portland, or Denver? I read an article a while ago that said most (if not all) of the growth in metro Houston was outside of Harris County. I’ve read similar article about Dallas. The largest share of the growth is outside of Dallas County.

False. Since 2010 Harris County has added 606k people. That's more people in that county than the entire Seattle CSA has added since 2010. And btw, that's more people than all of the suburban Houston counties put together (~ 480k in the suburban counties).

I don't know if Houston is densifying at Seattle rates because Seattle is seeing a massive uptick right in the core whereas for Houston it is spread throughout the inner loop and areas west of there but your statement about most (if not all) the growth outside Harris County is wrong. For 2 years during the oil bust the suburban counties grew faster and that's it. DT Houston has quadrupled its population and housing in just this decade and it still pales in comparison to the changes made in Midtown, Montrose, Museum district, upper kirby, greenway, uptown, etc inside the loop. But for this thread, Seattle probably is the fastest urbanizing city in the US this decade.

Waterloo is doing that too, on a smaller scale, but I'd say at a greater intensity. It's replacing a 1940s-1960s SFH area surrounding its universities with midrises and highrises, even along culs-de-sacs and crescents. The first buildings were single use but now they have retail at grade too.

This area used to be entirely SFH about 10 years ago.
https://www.google.ca/maps/@43.47608...7i16384!8i8192

Anyways, I'd say Toronto, Vancouver, Miami, Seattle, Portland, Houston, LA are the main ones that will built a lot of density outside of downtown/already very dense areas.

Well there's not a whole lot of backyards there so I guess that helps. I do wonder how they're going to manage to serve dozens of condos with only one road leading out though.

The Brampton redevelopment isn't of an industrial estate though, it's of a golf course and sports complex west of Highway 410.

I wouldn't say that most Toronto's post-war suburbs are fully built out. A lot of them are still building subdivisions, it's mostly just Burlington, Mississauga and Newmarket that are built out, and Mississauga's growth has slowed significantly (Burlington and Newmarket were slower growing for a while). Vaughan is still building a lot of subdivisions around Kleinburg; Brampton and Milton all over the place; North Oakville; East Gwilimbury... even Markham, Ajax, Pickering, Aurora and Richmond Hill on a smaller scale.

The subdivisions are getting denser and denser though. I check them out every now and then and the playgrounds are often quite bustling whereas if you take your kid to your typical suburban playground it'll be pretty empty. And of course even though most suburbs are seeing greenfield development, it's not as much as before and that's because of the shift to highrises. Toronto should have a weighted density of around 20,000 ppsm in 2050 at this rate, which would put it roughly in between the current weighted densities of the Boston and New York urban areas.

Nimby-ism is alive and well in Austin, so I think most densification will happen in re-purposed shopping center or light industry locations simply because many of them are well located vis-a-vis transit options, and mid-rise or possibly even high rise development in such settings would not arouse too much local opposition. There is still a lot of room for sprawl in the Austin area, but commute times have become a major issue due to intense freeway congestion and lack of rail transit.

is this a thing down there?? we have a dying mall id like to see this happen too.

So far, only one major regional shopping mall has been repurposed, but another prime mall location (Barton Square) is slowly sinking and likely to be redeveloped within the next decade. Highland Mall, located about four miles north of downtown, was converted into the headquarter campus for Austin Community College and several largish (Texas Doughnut type) four to five story apartment houses have gone up there as well. More are in the works, and nearby underutilized commercial properties adjacent to Airport Blvd. are also seeing apartment development. Major arteries like South Lamar, North Lamar, Burnet Road and East Riverside have seen commercial strip centers replaced with apartment projects. At least one medium sized single story shopping center has undergone complete redevelopment with a big housing component. Similar projects are planned elsewhere. This is all aided by the retail meltdown, and I expect the process to accelerate as more and more large, medium, and small single story shopping centers lose retail tenants. A very large mid-rise and high-rise redevelopment project called Catalyst (offices and housing) in the vicinity of East Riverside adjacent to the Oracle campus between downtown and the airport is currently being held hostage to neighborhood NIMBY's concerned that the project will bring too much affluence to the rapidly gentrifying neighborhood and put the squeeze on adjacent affordable rental complexes that would likely end up being torn down or rehabilitated. Former industrial land in north Austin next to the very successful Domain complex is being converted to office and residential. This is all happening outside of the downtown core but well within the city limits of Austin.

I don't think any American city will densify substantially and come to rival the old urban cores of NYC, Philly, SF, etc. The long term trend has been a reduction in density, going back decades. However I do believe will happen is that extremely low density cities will bend closer to the norm if they are growing and are economically healthy.

Basically, I think stringy, underbuilt places with a lot of population growth like Nashville and Charlotte could easily double their density from maybe 2,000 people per square mile to 4,000 or so, matching places like Dallas and Phoenix. This would come from growth in the urban core to some extent, but also housing demand leading to more suburban apartment and townhome construction and subdivisions getting designed with much smaller lots.

However the only cities with the conditions necessary to go beyond the peak suburban density of 4,000 to 5,000 ppsm are not growing fast enough or are losing people outside their cores. Chicago will continue to build upwards inside the core but its outer areas and metro is shrinking. LA has a lot of pressure to grow upwards inside its existing footprint but the region is stagnating due to a very high cost of living, and average household sizes will probably decrease as neighborhoods gentrify and counter any increase in overall population or density.

Harris County is big though, how much of that was in the northwest corner along the Grand Parkway and going up towards Tomball? It's still mostly greenfield sprawl.

What remains to be seen is what happens to areas that are outside the 610 loop but inside the Beltway or at most with Hwy 6/FM 1960. Beyond the core inner loop gentrification areas I am not seeing much evidence of middle ring suburban growth beyond a few specific parts of West Houston.

That type of built form existed in Canada long before China started building high rises. ;)

Denser in the future? Most places.

Actually dense? Probably not(although that is subjective).

Americans, baring a few places, are anti-dense. And I mean like 99.9% of places in this country. Even in NYC there are some NIMBYs that complain about traffic or increased density. It's a real issue here.

People think a 4 story stick apartment building is adding incredible density. It might be a huge upgrade from what was there before, but it ain't dense.

DTLA proper (bounded by the three freeways and the LA River) is huge... the size of Midtown Manhattan (59th to 14th Streets). Most of it is light-industrial wasteland ripe for upzoning and redevelopment, and we've already seen skyscraper proposals outside of the main core (Main being the eastern boundary). And there's been little NIMBY resistance so far.

There's still the major issue of Skid Row, and new subway lines need to be built, but the potential's there to build an urban core that rivals Chicago's. And unlike Chicago, LA doesn't have the problem of a shrinking metro population.

Fourteenth Street is a very, very, very generous definition of Midtown. I would draw the line somewhere around 30-32nd St.

1 - Chicago's core is growing. 2 - L.A. is quite far behind.

That's Google Maps' definition. Regardless of geographic boundaries, DTLA proper is roughly the size of Manhattan from 59th down to 23rd or 14th Street... a huge area that isn't disrupted by freeways or waterways.

1) Chicago's core is already quite built-up.

2) For LA, I'm talking over the course of like 40-50 years.

I think it could increase in the future. I assume you're thinking mainly of the neighbourhoods from Uptown to Westchase, but there is also some infill happening in Spring Branch, as well as development spill-over from Shady Acres to north of 610. Those areas already add up to a land area almost double that of San Francisco city proper, so I'd say that's pretty significant.

Anyways, I see Houston as a city in transition that hasn't quite reached the tipping point. It used to be that the core was poor and the suburbs were wealthy, and that encourage continued sub urbanization of the professional class (both their homes and workplaces). However, the city has sprawled so much that combined with worsening traffic, it's difficult for the upscale suburbs to function as a cohesive job market. The core has been gentrifying a lot, and the working class has been suburbanizing a lot, like the areas West of Bear Creek Park, around Mission Bend/Four Corners, Katy, Spring Fort Bend/Missouri City and much of the eastern suburbs are pretty economically and socially diverse.

I think we're starting to see the Loop and some west side areas being the preferred location for the professional class and if a few changes start to happen (ex improved public schools) I can see Houston start to change very fast and even the eastern half of the loop and areas like Independence Heights become desirable, and Gulfton start to get more desirable and redeveloped.

At a certain point, Houston (and its suburbs) can't build out like they have in the past. You have to build up with more connected mass transit.

The huge addition of so much concrete means less places for water to soak into the soil and/or drain into the Gulf directly or indirectly. Minor tropical cyclones and seasonal rainstorms shouldn't paralyze any place so consistently.

Chicago's core is still growing. . . up until the mid-1980s everything around the Loop was heavy industry. . . that transformation from industrial to residential/office/hotel high rises continues to this day. . .

. . .

That’s great, but not relevant to the premise of the thread or the point I was trying to make. Not matter how much Chicago’s core continues to grow doesn’t change the fact that, land area-wise, DTLA is substantially larger than the Loop, West Loop, and Near North Side combined.

Depends how you define DTLA. The clearly-downtown areas are much smaller than the Chicago equivalent. Any set of parallel standards would have its area be much smaller.

Downtown LA is a region of LA that is made up of many many smaller neighborhoods and districts. Similar to when people in LA say the Westside or Harbor communities, Northeast LA. Eastside. DTLA is not what other cities probably call it which is the central area around a city hall plus the CBD.

DTLA is currently the areas mostly in the non-residential areas. Pretty much all the commercial, industrial, warehouse, cultural, sporting areas. Not all but most of these ares are considered Downtown LA area. Downtown LA is like saying Lower Manhattan or Midtown Manhattan. Actually Downtown might actually grow to include the industrial areas east of the LA River but not beyond the freeway. Who knows how much it will grow.

Downtown LA as a proxy for the regional core, is quite small, certainly much smaller than Downtown Chicago. It's actually amazingly small considering the size and importance of greater LA..

Obviously that doesn't mean that a large geography can't be labeled as "downtown LA", but it's delineating something much broader than than regional core.

the extremely nebulous concept of "downtown" is mostly worthless as a comparison tool because no two cities define "downtown" the same way. in fact, many cities (chicago included) don't even bother to ever formally define "downtown".

chicago does have what the city calls "the central area", defined as the lake over to ashland, and north ave. down to cermak. it's 11 sq. miles, but it includes a lot of areas that most urbanists would not include in a traditional interpretation of "downtown".

when someone says "downtown X has more Y than downtown Z", it's often a meaningless statement because apples are rarely ever compared with other apples in such instances.

I have lived in L.A, and now live in Chicago, believe me there is no comparison between DTLA and downtown Chicago in any metric. Not only is the urban core, with the exception of N.Y , outpacing all other U.S cities in growth, but the adjacent areas like the West Loop, Fulton Market, Near North are densifying like crazy. And this does not even include on the horizon mega-projects like The 78, Lincoln Yards, Michael Reese and others which will further densify the core. So maybe the topic should be growing density in U.S outside of Chicago and N.Y.

Chicago's central/ loop area is freaking massive. I walked from Desplaines St to Wabash and then from Wabash to Millennium Park and then on to area around JHC. That was 3 miles and only a small dent in the total area.

Yea, I lived in both. I don't see LA ever catching up to Chicago in respect to downtown/skyline .
That said, I do expect LA to surpass every other city's (not including NYC) downtown, barring some natural disaster.

And after returning to LA after visiting Chicago last month, LA feels bigger as a whole. The metro areas are different scopes.

Right. . . LA functions so much more at a regional decentralized level, where Chicago is extremely centrally focused. . . different animals, but I agree that LA certainly feels bigger, because it is in fact. . . bigger. . .

. . .

Yes, but some people on this forum don't think so. For some reason...:shrug:

Almost every Chicagoan in real life I know makes the same observation. But this forum lol..