How much a city can grow?

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by kittyhawk28

Of course, that was beside my point, which was that since both NY and Philly or LA and San Diego developed separately, their centers of gravity simply are not intertwined in the way dual-core metropolitan areas are, no matter how much you improve transit connections between them. Just because I can hop on a bullet train that comes every 3 minutes into Osaka from Tokyo for a business meeting and be back by dinner, doesn't mean the corridor between Tokyo or Osaka should be considered a single metro.

I find that Northeasterners in particular have this kind of mentality of conflating a megalopolis with a metropolitan area (maybe due to a desire to fulfill a superiority complex?). And that's what the term megalopolis is actually supposed mean re: NY + Philly or LA + SD; that is, deeply linked cities who share relationships far more than a typical intercity relationship, but aren't exactly cohesively linked enough to be considered one.

I don't think you understand what I'm saying. I'm saying that to the person who lives in central New Jersey, the distinction is arbitrary. It's not about whether someone in Brooklyn feels like they live in the same city as someone in West Philadelphia. There are tons of people living in central Jersey that commute to NYC while their spouses commute to Philadelphia.

[Steely Dan]

I'm still very interested to see how "commuting" gets defined in the WFH era.

Many of our bloated and colliding MSAs/CSAs might get a bit paired back and disentangled if the former super commuter who once traveled 40+ miles to city x everyday, now only does so a handful of times a month and is no longer really a daily commuter as we used to conventionally understand it.

Also, when the hell is the CB gonna release the 2020 Urban Area results? they're the one true apples-to-apples measure for comparing individual cities, not regions. And they have nothing to do with "commuting", however it gets defined.

[Beedok]

Tokyo’s area is already very multi-nodal. I think the cut off for what a mono-centric city can reach might be below Tokyo’s size already. Darker colours here represent the core ‘cities’ of Tokyo’s metropolitan area.

[kittyhawk28]

Originally Posted by iheartthed

I don't think you understand what I'm saying. I'm saying that to the person who lives in central New Jersey, the distinction is arbitrary. It's not about whether someone in Brooklyn feels like they live in the same city as someone in West Philadelphia. There are tons of people living in central Jersey that commute to NYC while their spouses commute to Philadelphia.

But that's probably an insubstantial portion of the overall NY metro area though. If your talking about central New Jersey, maybe at most 2 million people who live in the overlapping commuter sheds of NY and Philly? Now, I will admit that is more than LA and San Diego's shared commuter shed, which is probably at most 300-400K. Either way, its only probably around ~10% the overall NY metro area, while in normal metro regions the proportion is much higher.

[aderwent]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

I'm still very interested to see how "commuting" gets defined in the WFH era.

Many of our bloated and colliding MSAs/CSAs might get a bit paired back and disentangled if the former super commuter who once traveled 40+ miles to city x everyday, now only does so a handful of times a month and is no longer really a daily commuter as we used to conventionally understand it.

Also, when the hell is the CB gonna release the 2020 Urban Area results? they're the one true apples-to-apples measure for comparing individual cities, not regions. And they have nothing to do with "commuting", however it gets defined.

Yeah I'm impatiently waiting, too. They also changed the definition. I hope they release numbers with the old formula too for comparison's sake.

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by kittyhawk28

But that's probably an insubstantial portion of the overall NY metro area though. If your talking about central New Jersey, maybe at most 2 million people who live in the overlapping commuter sheds of NY and Philly? Now, I will admit that is more than LA and San Diego's shared commuter shed, which is probably at most 300-400K. Either way, its only probably around ~10% the overall NY metro area, while in normal metro regions the proportion is much higher.

I don't think that's insignificant, but my point wasn't about the proportion of the population that overlaps. My point is that there really is no distinct boundary that separates New York from Philadelphia.

[MolsonExport]

Is Tokyo truly monocentric? Yokohama has been an important city in its own right for nearly 200 years. It had more than 400K people in 1910.

[Yuri]

Originally Posted by MolsonExport

Is Tokyo truly monocentric? Yokohama has been an important city in its own right for nearly 200 years. It had more than 400K people in 1910.

I guess we could say Yokohama is today inside the Tokyo's urban core along the old wards of the capital. In that sense, we could say Tokyo is kind of monocentric. A bit like Jersey City being part of New York's core.

[JHikka]

Would Guangzhou-Shenzhen-Hong Kong be a leader for this sort of discussion? Increasingly linked via infrastructure like three separate high-speed railways, five airports, and three of the busiest ports in the world.

[Yuri]

Originally Posted by JHikka

Would Guangzhou-Shenzhen-Hong Kong be a leader for this sort of discussion? Increasingly linked via infrastructure like three separate high-speed railways, five airports, and three of the busiest ports in the world.

Hong Kong is not even the same "country", so no.

And Guangzhou and Shenzhen is forming the classical polycentric metro area, with sevela clusters, like a bigger Rhine-Ruhr.

I guess the main rival for Tokyo in this regard would be New Delhi or Jakarta.

[10023]

I would dispute the idea that Tokyo is a “monocentric city”. It’s most definitely polycentric even if most of its nodes are under the same municipal government. The same goes for Los Angeles, or for London.

Taking London as an example, it could spread another 20 miles in every direction, and nothing would change. People in West London would still very rarely, if ever, go to East London and vice versa. People would find jobs in whatever part of central London is around the rail terminus that they can easily access (there are at least 10 “main” railway stations from which trains arrive and depart in different directions). There is no limit to how large a city can become if it has lots of commercial/financial districts, lots of entertainment districts, multiple airports, a dense rail network, etc.

Chicago, on the other hand, is an archetypical monocentric city. NYC probably is too, but it’s more debatable (I think Downtown, Midtown and DT Brooklyn are all too close to each other to be distinct “nodes”).

[Yuri]

Originally Posted by 10023

I would dispute the idea that Tokyo is a “monocentric city”. It’s most definitely polycentric even if most of its nodes are under the same municipal government. The same goes for Los Angeles, or for London.

Taking London as an example, it could spread another 20 miles in every direction, and nothing would change. People in West London would still very rarely, if ever, go to East London and vice versa. There is no limit to how large a city can become if it has lots of commercial/financial districts, lots of entertainment districts, multiple airports, a dense rail network, etc.

Chicago, on the other hand, is an archetypical monocentric city. NYC probably is too, but it’s more debatable (I think Downtown, Midtown and DT Brooklyn are all too close to each other to be distinct “nodes”).

Ok, in those cities (London, Tokyo, São Paulo), you do have several job clusters, but they have a core, taking like 10%-20% of the urban inner area where most jobs are concentrated, where densities are high. In that sense, they are monocentric.

São Paulo, for instance, had its financial centre moved from the old historical downtown, to Paulista Avenue and then to Faria Lima Avenue, good 8 km away from the original one. However, if you zoom out, you'll see the Old Downtown and Faria Lima are not that far from each other. They are in fact relatively pretty close as the city spans for 100 km on the east-west axis.

Ditto for Tokyo: Downtown Yokohama, for instance, is quite central inside the Tokyo metro area. Canary Wharf is only 4 km away from the City.

In those "monocentric" cities you have an expanded core where most jobs are located in. Düsseldorf and Cologne or Shenzhen and Guangzhou have a very distinct morphology. They are part of the same metro areas, but they have a very distinct polycentric nature.

[10023]

^ the West End of London, the City and Canary Wharf are 3 distinct commercial districts, and no one who has ever lived and worked here would ever dispute that. They are more distinct than, say, Midtown and Downtown Manhattan, because there isn’t as much connectivity between the neighbourhoods in between (at least in the case of Canary Wharf, which is as isolated as Jersey City).

What you are talking about are not “polycentric cities”, but megalopolises.

[Yuri]

Originally Posted by 10023

^ the West End of London, the City and Canary Wharf are 3 distinct commercial districts, and no one who has ever lived and worked here would ever dispute that. They are more distinct than, say, Midtown and Downtown Manhattan, because there isn’t as much connectivity between the neighbourhoods in between (at least in the case of Canary Wharf, which is as isolated as Jersey City).

What you are talking about are not “polycentric cities”, but megalopolises.

They are, 10023. However they are all inside Inner London. In fact, they are inside the inner part of inner London. That's why London is not understood as a "polycentric city". Neither New York.

West End and Canary Wharf are all "inner London". You can even walk between them. Essen, Düsseldorf and Cologne, on the other hand, have completely different clusters, separated by tens of kilometers of suburbs and industrial plants.

[iheartthed]

New York is polycentric, but it's not as evenly split as other very large cities like Tokyo and São Paulo. Midtown and the Financial District dwarf all the other nodes by quite a lot. But this is what I'd consider NY's nodes to be:

• Midtown
• Financial District (aka downtown)
• Jersey City & Hoboken (really just extensions of FiDi and the West Village)
• Downtown Brooklyn
• Newark
• White Plains
• Stamford, CT
• Parsippany, NJ
• Long Island City/Astoria
• Garden City & Jericho

[Beedok]

Originally Posted by Yuri

I guess we could say Yokohama is today inside the Tokyo's urban core along the old wards of the capital. In that sense, we could say Tokyo is kind of monocentric. A bit like Jersey City being part of New York's core.

Downtown Yokohama is over a 30km drive from Tokyo’s historic downtown? That’s 3/4s of the distance between Cologne and Düsseldorf, and roughly the distance from Dusseldorf to Essen. Seems easily far enough to count as a separate node to me.

[Minato Ku]

Yokohama is clearly separated from Central Tokyo,
Between Shinagawa (south of central Tokyo) and Yokohama station, you have lots residential of medium density suburban areas. It creates a clear distinction.

Originally Posted by Yuri

They are, 10023. However they are all inside Inner London. In fact, they are inside the inner part of inner London. That's why London is not understood as a "polycentric city". Neither New York.

West End and Canary Wharf are all "inner London". You can even walk between them. Essen, Düsseldorf and Cologne, on the other hand, have completely different clusters, separated by tens of kilometers of suburbs and industrial plants.

I agree, it's what I wold call a polycentric central core.
Just like Tokyo has areas Shinjuku, Shibuya, Ueno, Asakusa, Marouncihi/Otemachi/Ginza.... All these different districts forms a larger extended center rather than a single small concentrated downtown.
The City of Paris is also the case of those kind of large extended centre.

Large cities often have polycentric cores. It's why those cities don't have a single pedestrian central area like you would find in other cities.

I think you could accept Canary Wharf (or La Défense) as a separate nodes even if those are still inside the dense area.
The areas between City of London and Canary Wharf quite create a real separation between both. Commercial road isn't very urban.
https://www.google.fr/maps/@51.51325...7i16384!8i8192

Avenue du General de Gaulle between the City of Paris and La Défense is more urban than Commercial road but there is always a kind of psychological barrier.
https://www.google.fr/maps/@48.88172...7i16384!8i8192

What makes London polycentric isn't West End or the City but place like Croydon, Hounslow. But those places over the two or three last decades have lost a lot of attractivity when it comes to office based activities.
Office development in London has been very centralised in Central London and Canary Wharf since the 2000s.

[Yuri]

Originally Posted by Beedok

Downtown Yokohama is over a 30km drive from Tokyo’s historic downtown? That’s 3/4s of the distance between Cologne and Düsseldorf, and roughly the distance from Dusseldorf to Essen. Seems easily far enough to count as a separate node to me.

Tokyo has 40 million inh. Rhine-Ruhr, only 11 million so what's regarded "inner city" is much bigger in Tokyo.

Tokyo 23 special wards are pretty much "central Tokyo" and Yokohama-Kawasaki is adjacent to it.

[Yuri]

Originally Posted by Minato Ku

(...)

I think you could accept Canary Wharf (or La Défense) as a separate nodes even if those are still inside the dense area.
The areas between City of London and Canary Wharf quite create a real separation between both. Commercial road isn't very urban.
https://www.google.fr/maps/@51.51325...7i16384!8i8192

Avenue du General de Gaulle between the City of Paris and La Défense is more urban than Commercial road but there is always a kind of psychological barrier.
https://www.google.fr/maps/@48.88172...7i16384!8i8192

(...)

I find those areas between Canary Wharf and the City and between the Arc de Triomphe a bit depressing. There's nothing to see.

Either way, both London and Paris, although with several job nodes, are clearly monocentric cities, with a big expanded "central area" which is something to expect for such large metropolises.

São Paulo also follow this pattern, but it's clearly a monocentric metropolitan area with multiple nodes.

[Minato Ku]

And it's the same between Central Tokyo and Yokohama.
Its full of those kind of area.
https://www.google.fr/maps/@35.55327...7i16384!8i8192

That's why one can clearly say that Central Tokyo and Yokohama are two different nodes.