What is the second most urban city in the United States?

[pj3000]

Originally Posted by skysoar

I have no idea what your trolling point is. Also it should be written as," worry about what he is talking about". Reasonable people can disagree about what constitutes rowhouses, skyscrapers, etc, this is what we do.

Maybe you should go back and see that I was talking to someone else.

[dave8721]

I'm surprised Boston gets so little mention. IMO in just purity of urban experience (if we ignore scale) it probably comes in #1 in the US, ahead of NY.

[jd3189]

Boston does have some old urban qualities like in Beacon Hill and other neighborhoods. It has a few more of those types of neighborhoods compared to NYC. But what NYC had that is similar (the older parts of Lower Manhattan) are very epic. Very few US, even among the big six in their downtowns have anything close to this, which is very reminiscent of the old centers in Europe.

Mott Street by Brandon Bartoszek, on Flickr

[Handro]

Originally Posted by jd3189

Boston does have some old urban qualities like in Beacon Hill and other neighborhoods. It has a few more of those types of neighborhoods compared to NYC. But what NYC had that is similar (the older parts of Lower Manhattan) are very epic. Very few US, even among the big six in their downtowns have anything close to this, which is very reminiscent of the old centers in Europe.kr

Yep, New York is the clear #1--that's why the thread is asking which is #2. New York will always have the most built density and pedestrian activity.

[JAYNYC]

Originally Posted by dave8721

I'm surprised Boston gets so little mention. IMO in just purity of urban experience (if we ignore scale) it probably comes in #1 in the US, ahead of NY.

Yeah, no.

Pretty hilarious joke, though.

[The North One]

Originally Posted by JAYNYC

Yeah, no.

Pretty hilarious joke, though.

It's not a joke, many Boston neighborhoods are better examples of higher urbanism than anything in New York. Like what was already said, it's essentially the closest thing to a European city center in the US.

[jmecklenborg]

Cambridge and Sommerville are very dense. Many apartment buildings are built to the rear lot lines and so have more units than their street-facing facades advertise.

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by The North One

It's not a joke, many Boston neighborhoods are better examples of higher urbanism than anything in New York. Like what was already said, it's essentially the closest thing to a European city center in the US.

Boston looks like it could be British or Irish, but it otherwise doesn't look like a European city center.

[edale]

Originally Posted by iheartthed

Boston looks like it could be British or Irish, but it otherwise doesn't look like a European city center.

Having just come back from a lovely trip to Boston, I had the same thoughts about it resembling Dublin or a smaller London in places. Walking down Newbury and Boylston Streets with all the al fresco dining and shopping did make me feel like I was in Europe or something. It's just so incredibly vibrant and pleasant and scaled for the pedestrian. Combine that with the beautiful Public Garden and other surrounding residential neighborhoods like Beacon Hill, and Boston has a pretty incredible swath of urbanity.

Boston might not be America's second most urban city, but it might just have our best (or second best) urbanity.

To answer the OP, I think I'd go with Chicago, just because it seems to have the largest amount of traditional urbanism outside of NYC, and its core is the only other city in North America that holds a candle to NYC's (yes, including Toronto). Chicago takes a hit because of urban renewal and abandonment in portions of the city, but what American city hasn't experienced those issues? SF, Boston, and Philly are the only other cities who deserve to be in the conversation. LA is massive, but it's not traditionally urban in the sense that those other cities are.

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by edale

Having just come back from a lovely trip to Boston, I had the same thoughts about it resembling Dublin or a smaller London in places. Walking down Newbury and Boylston Streets with all the al fresco dining and shopping did make me feel like I was in Europe or something.

The UK and Ireland have a distinct built form, quite different from Europe. I can see Boston vaguely resembling British/Irish cities, but no, it doesn't resemble Vienna, Brussels, Valencia or Lyon. And Newbury St. essentially looks the same as Montague St. in Brooklyn.

Boston has some extremely high quality urbanity, but in tiny amounts. The really awesome part of the North End is like five blocks. Beacon Hill is maybe three blocks. That's it. Philly has more of the same quality, and NYC obviously has multiples more of the same quality. What's great about Boston is the neighborhoods seamlessly flow together, and there are no sketchy areas anywhere near the core.

[dc_denizen]

Well if that’s your standard Barcelona has a tiny amount of quality urbanity , I mean the gothic quarter is only a couple blocks

[Shawn]

Originally Posted by Crawford

The UK and Ireland have a distinct built form, quite different from Europe. I can see Boston vaguely resembling British/Irish cities, but no, it doesn't resemble Vienna, Brussels, Valencia or Lyon. And Newbury St. essentially looks the same as Montague St. in Brooklyn.

Boston has some extremely high quality urbanity, but in tiny amounts. The really awesome part of the North End is like five blocks. Beacon Hill is maybe three blocks. That's it. Philly has more of the same quality, and NYC obviously has multiples more of the same quality. What's great about Boston is the neighborhoods seamlessly flow together, and there are no sketchy areas anywhere near the core.

I have to disagree with your “vaguely” part. Central Boston and central Dublin are “decidedly” similar. Check out Signalhillhiker’s excellent Dublin thread to see what I mean: http://forum.skyscraperpage.com/showthread.php?t=240275

[edale]

Originally Posted by Crawford

The UK and Ireland have a distinct built form, quite different from Europe. I can see Boston vaguely resembling British/Irish cities, but no, it doesn't resemble Vienna, Brussels, Valencia or Lyon. And Newbury St. essentially looks the same as Montague St. in Brooklyn.

Boston has some extremely high quality urbanity, but in tiny amounts. The really awesome part of the North End is like five blocks. Beacon Hill is maybe three blocks. That's it. Philly has more of the same quality, and NYC obviously has multiples more of the same quality. What's great about Boston is the neighborhoods seamlessly flow together, and there are no sketchy areas anywhere near the core.

1) Europe doesn't have a unified look. Paris looks totally different than Amsterdam, which looks totally different than Berlin, which looks totally different than Stockholm...etc. Plus, the UK and Ireland are part of Europe, even if the UK wants to divorce itself from the EU. Not really sure what you're trying to say there.

2) You're 100% exaggerating how small Boston's good urban footprint is. Beacon Hill is obviously more than 3 blocks. The distance from the North End to out by Fenway is a little over 3 miles, and I'd consider just about everything in that stretch pretty fantastic urbanism, at least by US standards.

3) There are a lot of great areas outside of Beacon Hill and the Back Bay in Boston. The South End, Bunker Hill, Columbus, Bay Village...all outside of those areas and I'd pit any of them against the finest urban neighborhoods in the US. Cambridge and Somerville have amazing urbanity too, but the housing is admittedly more detached in those areas, but still very pleasant and pretty.

[JManc]

New York and Philly are psychically much larger than Boston so naturally they will have more urbanity but Boston packs a lot in for much of it's footprint.

Originally Posted by IrishIllini

Your Chicago intersection feels less urban than the SF one.

I'm not seeing it. They look extremely comparable to me. I'm slightly more drawn to the Chicago intersection, actually.

[MonkeyRonin]

Originally Posted by Crawford

Boston has some extremely high quality urbanity, but in tiny amounts. The really awesome part of the North End is like five blocks. Beacon Hill is maybe three blocks. That's it. Philly has more of the same quality, and NYC obviously has multiples more of the same quality. What's great about Boston is the neighborhoods seamlessly flow together, and there are no sketchy areas anywhere near the core.

Almost everything within the area shown here is extremely high quality, historic, pedestrian-oriented urbanism. This is several square kilometres - not 8 blocks. Boston's urban core is smaller than Chicago or Philly's, but it's still larger than any other city in the country and what does exist is arguably unparalleled.

[Centropolis]

san francisco has expansive areas of walk-up type urbanity to say nothing of seemingly endless rowhouse/zero-lot-line blocks also interspersed with walkups if we are talking about boston being “unparalleled.”

[pj3000]

Philly, Boston, DC are the ones I would go with, in no particular order.

The only reason I don’t have Chicago in my list is due to my own ignorance of Chicago. I shamefully admit that I’ve never really experienced the city (only been to the airport, suburban office park, rode thru the city a bit in a car, and left). So I really haven’t been to the Monster of the Midway. I hope to change that in the Spring.

In SF (which is awesome), I feel a greater sense of space that doesn’t give me the same “city feel” as I get in east coast cities or even in Pittsburgh’s dense urban neighborhoods. Just my opinion.

[Centropolis]

Originally Posted by pj3000

Philly, Boston, DC are the ones I would go with, in no particular order.

The only reason I don’t have Chicago in my list is due to my own ignorance of Chicago. I shamefully admit that I’ve never really experienced the city (only been to the airport, suburban office park, rode thru the city a bit in a car, and left). So I really haven’t been to the Monster of the Midway. I hope to change that in the Spring.

In SF (which is awesome), I feel a greater sense of space that doesn’t give me the same “city feel” as I get in east coast cities or even in Pittsburgh’s dense urban neighborhoods. Just my opinion.

SF, thanks to topography and lack of a traditional tree canopy has a massive open feel to the sky/horizon that distorts the sense of space in my opinion.

[pico44]

When it comes to pleasantness of urban form, nothing beats a random pattern of medieval streets like The North End. But Crawford is right, the truly European-like charm-bomb of central Boston is not even a third of a square mile, and is home to probably 12,000 people. There is plenty more high-density Boston, but these areas are your standard American urban blocks--tightly packed housing on a grid that New York has by a factor of many tens, or even hundreds. To say nothing of business districts and skyscrapers and infrastructure and transportation. If you think this makes Boston number one in urban experience, then you are probably an idiot. Probably definitely, in fact. Based on that logic, Lucca, Italy would be the most urban town in the United States. Don't get me wrong, expand the North End by thirty or forty times and put several good arteries through it, and you'd have a really great city, one I would love to live in, but that just doesn't exist in America.