Great American cities and water
 

Looking at some great urbanity centers in America, NYC, Chicago, Boston, Philadelphia, S.F, Seattle, Miami, and L.A to a certain extent all have one thing in common, bordered on large bodies of water. Is it possible that these borders of water creates more compact cities and thereby increasing the size, density, and influence of their urban cores. Even secondary cities with large water contents like Detroit, Cleveland, Baltimore, New Orleans have great urban core fabrics. Meanwhile cities like Dallas, Denver, Houston, Atlanta etc are growing emerging cities lacking large bodies of water, that are four sided[east/west/north/south, and have great horizontal skylines but seemingly lacks the great urban feel found in some of the more water dominated vertically centralized cities.

Before trains, cities were almost exclusively built on/near waterways. It makes sense that older cities with more traditional urban bones would be located near bodies of water.

Houston is kinda inbetween. The core doesn't border a body of water but much of the metro area does.

People love to be near water.

An interesting discussion on cities. Water and shipping by water was extremely important in the past development of cities in the USA, but also in most other countries. It is difficult to name many major cities that are without a river or waterfront. You mention Houston, but it has Galveston quite nearby. I would add Phoenix to your list.

In the case of Atlanta, there is the Chattahoochee River, but it does not run through the City of Atlanta, just on the edge. It provides the water for the Atlanta area and some recreation, but is not a big river. The nearest major port is Savannah which is growing in significance on the East Coast.

This is the answer. It's correlation, not causation. There's no North American city where water is the key factor causing large-scale densification in 2021.

Miami? Honolulu?

I'd beg to differ, water is a amentity feature. I think in the future because of the internet and automation, the strongest motivation for cities in developed, rich countries to become very, very dense will either be that a city is very desirable, or that a city was already like that. Water is one of those natural features that would make a newer, less dense city be desirable enough to push up land values, while simultaneously being a common feature of older cities that are already urban.

One word: ports.

Most people only have experience riding cruise ships, which are generally pretty good at avoiding the roughest weather. It's pretty rare that you hear about someone getting into bad weather on a day-tripping boat (ferry, fishing boat, etc.) because they simply don't go out.

Until satellites gave us accurate real-time weather data, there was really no way to avoid getting caught in tropical cyclones or other foul weather without avoiding entire seasons of the year.

I highly recommend that all seek out the Hemingway short story After the Storm. However, I do think part of the reason why Hemingway has generally fallen out of favor is because the general public, and certainly academia, is increasingly unfamiliar with seafaring (and warfare, but let's stay on topic). About the only familiarity that the American public has with rough seas is Deadliest Catch and maybe that song The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.

jmecklenborg///

Rough seas, yes, in a manner of speaking, since the Edmund Fitzgerald sank in a Great Lake.

I get experience with rough "seas" everytime Lake Michigan splashes me on the lakefront path . One time I got absolutely soaked by the Shedd..

yeah, the 1975 sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald was nearly a half-century ago now.

her loss (with all 29 men on board) was the last major shipwreck on the great lakes. in the centuries prior, hundreds upon hundreds of commercial ships, and an uncountable number of lives, were lost to great lakes storms and getting lost in the lake fog.

but as you mentioned, modern weather tracking, radar, and GPS navigation systems have largely made that a thing of the past on the lakes, at least at the commercial shipping level. (obviously, smaller recreational boats are still lost on the lakes fairly regularly)

While not directly on the large body of water, Buffalo Bayou downtown has served as an ocean-going port as far back as the 1800s serving the cotton industry, and within the city limits the Houston Ship Channel and Port of Houston is now the second largest port by volume in the United States. Houston is as close, or maybe closer, to the ocean than New Orleans and Philadelphia.

What about great Canadian cities and water? In particular, Montreal and Vancouver are what they are only because of their ports and inter-modal hubs.

^ toronto and hamilton also owe a good deal of their growth/prosperity to their histories as great lakes port cities.

perhaps not to the same extent as true ocean ports like vancouver and montreal, but it's still a significant factor nonetheless.

And Halifax, no doubt.

Paris and London aren't near big bodies of water and they have dense, urban cores. It's really just all about how big your city got pre-WWII. It's that simple.

Both cities are oriented along rivers.

American settlements like to border along water, because we get thirsty from time to time!