Agreed, not sure what’s officially considered “downtown” for the purposes of this thread, but the “downtown” Portland numbers are very misleading.

If we google "Downtown Portland". The vast majority of entries show pretty much the same definition I used here. Not sure what's "misleading" about it. From Wikipedia:

"The downtown neighborhood extends west from the Willamette to Interstate 405 and south from Burnside Street to just south of the Portland State University campus (also bounded by I-405)"

Downtown New Orleans

https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/...1129d062_z.jpg


-------------------------------- 2020 ------ 2010 ------ 2000 ------ 1990 ------ Growth ------ Density

CBD ------------------------------ 4,351 ------ 2,276 ------ 1,794 ------ 1,373 ----- 91.2% ---- 26.9% ---- 30.7% ------- 2.6 km² --- 1,661.3 inh./km²

French Quarter ------------------ 3,523 ------ 3,813 ------ 4,176 ------ 4,068 ----- -7.6% ---- -8.7% ----- 2.7% ------- 1.2 km² --- 2,827.4 inh./km²

New Orleans Metro Area ---- 1,251,653 -- 1,167,764 -- 1,316,510 -- 1,264,391 ------ 7.2% --- -11.3% ----- 4.1% --- 7,681 km²


New Orleans is arguably the most unique metro area in the continental US, but its CBD is also following the national trend and although from a very low base, is growing at a very fast pace.

French Quarter surprised me as it seems to have a very well established residential population and I had no idea. I thought it was just an entertainment district. And it is, as the CBD, a White-majority area, while immediatelly north there's one census tract entirely formed by a project which is virtually all-Black.

I'm surprised the French Quarter lost population. I wonder why?

Because that’s a super small area that’s nearly entirely commercial, as opposed to some of the broader definitions of other city’s downtown areas. Semantics, really. As the other poster said, if you included The Pearl and Goose Hollow areas, which in most cities would probably be considered part of “downtown”, the numbers would increase dramatically.

If I had to guess, airbnb.

We can talk about other neighbourhoods too, but this thread is focused on Downtowns.

About the size, New Orleans that I just posted above, is only slightly larger (2.6 km² vs 2.1 km²). Or Pittsburgh posted few pages back with only 1.4 km², Kansas City (2.3 km²), Denver (2.3 km²), Tampa (1.9 km²).


I wonder how is like to live there. It's definitely not an ordinary place to live in.

That's an ok definition. But there's a ton of variation between cities in this thread.

Cleveland getting 7.8 sk and Portland getting 2.1 sk?

Each city/community define their Downtowns according to their realities and they're definitely not worried about on how another city thousands of kms away will do it.

Specifically about Cleveland, it actually takes less census tracts than Portland. It's only 3 whether Portland's comprises 5. Their domestic airport and their massive docks are all contained there.

Cleveland's Burke Lakefront airport isn't a "domestic airport", it's really much more of a general aviation airport, with the only scheduled passenger service being twice daily flights to Cincinnati-Lunken on Ultimate Air Shuttle (which flies little 30-seater regional jets).

99% of Cleveland's commercial air passenger traffic goes through the city's main airport, Hopkins.

Yeah, it's kind of ridiculous that it takes up so much land with such little use.

Probably like living in Venice or Sighisoara or Zermatt I would guess.

Why would one expect the French Quarter gain population? Landmarked areas with no new construction, and high housing values, tend to have declining population, due to decreasing household sizes and increasing frequency of non-primary homes, and transient accommodations. Places like Venice and Florence take this to extremes.

New Orleans banned non owner occupied Airbnb's for most of the city.

Right, Portland definitely has a ton of new residential construction. The Pearl District and whatever they call that highrise corridor along the river south of downtown are pretty impressive.

This exercise, while fun and somewhat illustrative of trends, is hardly definitive. There's no definition of city centers, and census tracts aren't apples-apples.

Also, I'm not even sure that a high population growth is necessarily a sign of prosperity. The most high-value downtown office cores, places like Midtown Manhattan and Downtown DC, had limited population growth. This is because the highest and best use of land is for commercial uses. If the highest and best use shifted to residential, and former trophy office space were converted to apartments, that would arguably be a sign of relative weakness, not strength.

Hmm, and indeed now Airbnb is illegal in the French Quarter. Though units still seem to exist, such as https://www.airbnb.com/rooms/4852101...sts=1&adults=1

Most short term rentals are effectively illegal in NYC. Doesn't mean NYC doesn't have a huge market for such services. I suspect NOLA is similar.

I believe NYC is the largest or second largest AirBnB market worldwide, but in order to legally rent a place out, the owner/lessee would need to be physically present the whole time (yeah, right), no locks would be available on any room, and I think you would need to certify to the city that the guests are staying for non-leisure purposes.

There are even short-term rentals in housing projects. They're everywhere.

Yeah and AirBnB is obviously complicit in this. If they wanted to, they could enforce the rules... but that's never been their MO.

I calculated some figures for Australia’s two biggest cities, Sydney and Melbourne. They are seeing the same trends as North American cities. The earliest figures I could find were from 2001.

Sydney

Strict downtown definition using the ‘Sydney-Haymarket-The Rocks’ Statistical Area 2 (SA2), covering the core central business district. This has an area of 4.3km2. It has seen good growth but the local government prefers to focus on non-residential development here and it is the least dense part of central Sydney.

2001 – 14,393
2010 – 24,359
2020 – 33,238
Density in 2020 – 7,742/km2

Using a wider downtown definition including the neighbourhoods immediately surrounding the core. This includes the ‘Pyrmont-Ultimo’, ‘Surry Hills’, ‘Potts Point-Woolloomooloo’, ‘Darlinghurst’ and ‘Redfern-Chippendale’ SA2’s and has an area of 11.7km2.

2001 – 79,412
2010 – 108,970
2020 – 141,204
Density in 2020 – 12,068/km2

Melbourne

Strict downtown definition using the ‘Melbourne’ SA2, which covers the traditional grid forming Melbourne’s CBD. This has an area of 2.4km2 and has seen impressive growth over the past 20 years.

2001 – 7,644
2010 – 20,382
2020 – 53,180
Density in 2020 – 22,448/km2

Using a wider downtown definition covering the ‘Docklands’, ‘Southbank’ and ‘Carlton’ SA2s. This has an area of 9.7km2 and has added over 100,000 people in less than 20 years. It’s transformed from a 9-5 office district surrounded by light industry to a dense mixed use downtown over this period.

2001 – 21,657
2010 – 53,218
2020 – 122,097
Density in 2020 – 12,587/km2

Yeah I would definitely add the Pearl District. There's no reason it shouldn't be included as part of downtown for the purposes of this thread. ​It would add 11019 people in 0.4 square miles, almost doubling the downtown population.

It's a bit misleading to say "Downtown Portland hasn't followed the national trend, posting a rather modest growth and slower than its own metro area." That statement is intuitively wrong to anyone familiar with Portland. It's actually been a trendsetter for smaller urbanizing cities.