Inside Ring Roads

[Yuri]

Ann Arbor - I-94, M-14 and US 23

Lenght: 36.3 km

--- 2020 ----- 2010 ------ 2000 ------- 1990 ------------------- Growth ------------ Area -------- Density
123,892 ---- 114,008 ---- 114,638 ---- 110,324 --- +8.7% --- -0.5% --- +3.9% --- 73.5 Km² --- 1,685 inh./Km²

Well, Moscow got me lazy. I found a city whose borders match almost perfectly with its ring road: Ann Arbor. Some very tiny bits out and some enclaves in. I found an area encircled by the ring of 69.8 Km² on Google Maps whereas the city proper is at 73.5 Km².

Density is low which was expected for a small city in the US but it's experience a very healthy growth. The university there probably helps.

Now, let's back to work on the most difficult ones.

[Yuri]

Originally Posted by iheartthed

We often add Hudson County for the purposes of discussion on this forum, but it's not New York City. Hudson County is also much less dense than New York City is on average.

New York City is not quite as populous as Moscow, but they have about the same density. New York City's population density is 29,302/sq mile versus Moscow's 32,000/sq mile. I don't think any other city in Europe or the Americas has 8 - 10 million people living at roughly 30,000/square mile.

I added to find the same area for both Moscow and New York and coincidentally Hudson County brings exactly that. It's the closest and the densest jurisdiction bordering NYC and its considerably denser than Staten Island.

I find it very helpful when I want to have a bigger New York for comparison purposes (I also did that on the São Paulo ring road post) and the opposite too: when I often cut off Staten Island when I need a smaller New York.

In any case it's not a direct city vs city comparison either: unfortunately Moscow got a much bigger and weider city proper. And if we chose to downsize Moscow to make it the size of New York City, we could do it by removing the massive forests they have inside their ring road without losing any population on the process.

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

You can't quite get there for Chicago because LSD never meets up with any other highways on the Northside. It simply dumps all of its traffic back into city streets at the Hollywood/Sheridan intersection up in Edgewater. That far north, the Edens (I-94) is a good 5 miles inland. And I-94 stays miles inland for its entire journey up to Milwaukee.

Going south of from downtown, LSD does have an interchange with the stevenson (I-55) down by the convention center, but then after that, it never links up with any other highways either, eventually becoming just another city street through South Shore, much like Sheridan up on the far Northside.

Yeah, it's difficult. At some point we should pick up any random avenue to close the circle. I was examining Cleveland to do it and we have the same problem there, but much less complex.

[edale]

Originally Posted by iheartthed

New York City is not quite as populous as Moscow, but they have about the same density. New York City's population density is 29,302/sq mile versus Moscow's 32,000/sq mile. I don't think any other city in Europe or the Americas has 8 - 10 million people living at roughly 30,000/square mile.

Poking around Google maps/streetview, I'd never guess Moscow is anywhere close to being as dense as NYC. I spent a while trying to find the most impressive urbanism that might look like something approaching NYC, and I can't find anything. It's a very strangely laid out city, and honestly does not look very dense, so I'm surprised to hear it's denser than New York.

[Yuri]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

Milwaukee is another great lakes city without a clear and complete ring road.

Really off-center downtowns (as most great lakes cities have), don't easily lend themselves to the complete ring road metropolitan model.


And what the hell do you do with LA? It's like a vast matrix of interconnected expressways. It either has no ring road, or a dozen of them.

I won’t do LA.

Looking to California, I found San Diego has a cute one. It’s on the line.

[craigs]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

And what the hell do you do with LA? It's like a vast matrix of interconnected expressways. It either has no ring road, or a dozen of them.

Originally Posted by Yuri

I won’t do LA.

Looking to California, I found San Diego has a cute one. It’s on the line.

Neither Los Angeles nor San Diego has a "ring road" as defined by the linked Wikipedia article provided in the original post in this thread.

[AviationGuy]

Originally Posted by hipster duck

That's a lot lower than I thought, too. I thought there would be a million easily inside I-610, but then I forget just how physically big the City of Houston is. I'm guessing there's more people inside Atlanta's perimeter than Houston's, which is not something I would have ever predicted.

If you land at Houston Hobby airport and come in from the west, the city seems a lot denser.

Agree. There are dense pockets, especially west of downtown. Possibly the densest residential area is the Rice Military district, which is an expansive area of apartments, condos, and townhomes. Although most of Uptown residential is immediately outside of the loop, there's a significant part of Uptown residential just inside the loop. But the highrise character of the inner loop may make it look denser overall than it really is. That would include the med center district, which is pretty incredible but isn't residential, so it doesn't contribute to the data which is the subject of the thread.

[Yuri]

Originally Posted by craigs

Neither Los Angeles nor San Diego has a "ring road" as defined by the linked Wikipedia article provided in the original post in this thread.

On this 2nd article they have one for San Diego: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ring_roads: State Route 54, State Route 125 and State Route 52. Los Angeles gets one with I-405, I-605 and I-210, but it's an stretch due the reasons Steely mentioned.

What motivated me to work this as they provide sensible, physical and psychological boundaries such as the Washington Beltway that I found out that's used even as a metonymy or the Moscow one that was used as city border or very visible ones such as Indianapolis, Columbus and Atlanta.

In the US, they've been around since the 1950's, so it's part of the landscape and kind separated city+inner suburbs from outer suburbs+exurbs. I think it's a meaningful boundary on its own.

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by edale

Poking around Google maps/streetview, I'd never guess Moscow is anywhere close to being as dense as NYC. I spent a while trying to find the most impressive urbanism that might look like something approaching NYC, and I can't find anything. It's a very strangely laid out city, and honestly does not look very dense, so I'm surprised to hear it's denser than New York.

Yeah, Moscow doesn't seem that dense to me either, at least based on what I saw on Google Street View. I guess the commie blocks add up quickly.

Also, most people don't calculate Staten Island into their mental math of NYC and its density. The average density of Brooklyn, Queens, Manhattan, and the Bronx is 34,338/sq mile (versus 29,302 with SI). Brooklyn, Queen, Manhattan, and the Bronx collectively contain nearly 95% of NYC's population.

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

Milwaukee is another great lakes city without a clear and complete ring road.

Really off-center downtowns (as most great lakes cities have), don't easily lend themselves to the complete ring road metropolitan model.

Yeah, you can't really have true ring roads in any of the Great Lakes cities because they're all limited from sprawling outwards in all directions from the city, either by open water or an international border. I think this is an often overlooked factor of why the downtowns of certain Great Lakes cities did not transition well into the information economy after industrial decline.

[TWAK]

Originally Posted by craigs

Neither Los Angeles nor San Diego has a "ring road" as defined by the linked Wikipedia article provided in the original post in this thread.

Sacramento doesn't because of the freeway revolts (used the funding for light rail!), and the Bay has a continuous piece of pavement that is almost a loop: 280 and 680.

[mhays]

Originally Posted by iheartthed

Yeah, you can't really have true ring roads in any of the Great Lakes cities because they're all limited from sprawling outwards in all directions from the city, either by open water or an international border. I think this is an often overlooked factor of why the downtowns of certain Great Lakes cities did not transition well into the information economy after industrial decline.

It's worked ok for Seattle and San Francisco.

I'm not sure what factors you're talking about. Is it that the downtowns are on the edges of their regions rather than their middles? Is it that major highways/railroads have to travel through the downtowns rather than some of that getting routed farther away?

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by mhays

It's worked ok for Seattle and San Francisco.

I'm not sure what factors you're talking about. Is it that the downtowns are on the edges of their regions rather than their middles? Is it that major highways/railroads have to travel through the downtowns rather than some of that getting routed farther away?

Some of the Great Lakes downtowns are on the geographical edge and not close to enough landmasses to distribute sprawl around it. San Francisco's downtown is definitely not on the edge of the region and Seattle's is arguably not either. But, in particular, downtown San Francisco is central to areas on the peninsula, East Bay, and North Bay.

source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco_Bay_Area

To use Detroit as an example, downtown Detroit could not possibly be located in a less central location to the Detroit region. During the early 20th century there was a logistical need to be near the waterfront which necessitated that people commute to it (and live as close as possible). In the Information Era there was no geographical advantage to downtown Detroit. It is actually the last place you would decide to put a downtown in Metro Detroit if you were starting from scratch.

[Yuri]

Cincinnati - I-275

Lenght: 135 km

- 2020 ----- 2010 ------ 2000 ------- 1990 ------------- Growth ------------ Area -------- Density
913,863 --- 888,945 --- 933,446 --- 961,772 --- +2.8% --- -4.8% --- -2.9% --- 977.1 Km² --- 935 inh./Km²

One of the most well-defined ring roads in the US and very long and much longer than Washington's, for example.

Low density, which is expected specially it has lots of non-urbanized lands inside it (west). I was quite surprised to learn there are more people living in Cincinnati MSA outside the ring than inside of it. That shows how massive suburbanization is in the US.

There's a promising development though: population has grown on the last decade, interrupting decades of decline. It still grows slower than Cincinnati metro area as a whole (2.8% vs 5.6%).

[edale]

Cincinnati’s ring freeway has absolutely no business going as far west as it does. The city has very little sprawl to the west, and the western third (roughly) of Hamilton County is basically rural and without sewer connections. It’s challenging topography over there, and I don’t really know for sure, but I suspect the fact that 275 goes all the way to Indiana rather than cutting through the west side of Hamilton County contributes to it’s underdevelopment compared to other parts of the region. The west side is known for being inconvenient and “far” from many destinations and popular neighborhoods, both in the city and in the burbs. A new bridge connecting the west side of Cincinnati to the airport in KY would do wonders for the west side, but there aren’t any plans to build one to my knowledge.

[montréaliste]

Originally Posted by iheartthed

Some of the Great Lakes downtowns are on the geographical edge and not close to enough landmasses to distribute sprawl around it. San Francisco's downtown is definitely not on the edge of the region and Seattle's is arguably not either. But, in particular, downtown San Francisco is central to areas on the peninsula, East Bay, and North Bay.

source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco_Bay_Area

To use Detroit as an example, downtown Detroit could not possibly be located in a less central location to the Detroit region. During the early 20th century there was a logistical need to be near the waterfront which necessitated that people commute to it (and live as close as possible). In the Information Era there was no geographical advantage to downtown Detroit. It is actually the last place you would decide to put a downtown in Metro Detroit if you were starting from scratch.

On the other hand, so many legacy city downtowns are situated in a similar relation to shorelines. The recent push toward more residential occupation of downtowns makes the usefulness of downtowns more evident. In the case of Detroit, Toronto, Chicago downtowns; the high-rise and skyscraper points of view offset the lack of natural promontories by providing great river and lake views. Los Angeles, Vancouver or Seattle can provide views from higher points of view nestled in the natural landscape.

[Yuri]

Originally Posted by edale

Cincinnati’s ring freeway has absolutely no business going as far west as it does. The city has very little sprawl to the west, and the western third (roughly) of Hamilton County is basically rural and without sewer connections. It’s challenging topography over there, and I don’t really know for sure, but I suspect the fact that 275 goes all the way to Indiana rather than cutting through the west side of Hamilton County contributes to it’s underdevelopment compared to other parts of the region. The west side is known for being inconvenient and “far” from many destinations and popular neighborhoods, both in the city and in the burbs. A new bridge connecting the west side of Cincinnati to the airport in KY would do wonders for the west side, but there aren’t any plans to build one to my knowledge.

Due the census tracts shape, I didn't include this piece of land in Indiana as only a small part of tract (CT 804) is inside the ring road.

If we remove four big census tracts inside of the ring on the west (two in Hamilton and two in Boone, leaving this country completely out), we would have 858 Km², 895,022 people and a 1,043 inh./Km² density.

I would rather have a big ring road, far away from the core, than one too close. The US actually brought this to extremes, with their Downtown loops.

Originally Posted by iheartthed

(...)

To use Detroit as an example, downtown Detroit could not possibly be located in a less central location to the Detroit region. During the early 20th century there was a logistical need to be near the waterfront which necessitated that people commute to it (and live as close as possible). In the Information Era there was no geographical advantage to downtown Detroit. It is actually the last place you would decide to put a downtown in Metro Detroit if you were starting from scratch.

Detroit could have a nice ring road (coast style, using water as borders too) if they extend the I-275 north up to the I-75 (west of Farmington and Pontiac) and from there to use the M-59 as the northern border. Most of Wayne and the densest parts of Oakland and Macomb would fall inside it and I'd guess 3.5 million people.

[MolsonExport]

None of Canada's Big Three (Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver) have a ring road. Of the three, the closest to achieving this being Montreal. Due to geographical constraints, it is unlikely that Vancouver and Toronto could ever have ring roads (although in the past, there have been plans mooted for a freeway tunnel under parts of Lake Ontario, south of Toronto).

Highway 30 allows through traffic to bypass Montreal on the South Shore.

[Yuri]

Montreal it's very close. It "only" requires two bridges, one north one southwest, to link highways 30 and 640. And it will be one of those very meaningful as it would encircle pretty much all the urban area and the two islands.

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by Yuri

Detroit could have a nice ring road (coast style, using water as borders too) if they extend the I-275 north up to the I-75 (west of Farmington and Pontiac) and from there to use the M-59 as the northern border. Most of Wayne and the densest parts of Oakland and Macomb would fall inside it and I'd guess 3.5 million people.

I-275 and I-696 act as a semi-ring road for Detroit.

[Yuri]

Originally Posted by iheartthed

I-275 and I-696 act as a semi-ring road for Detroit.

Yeah, but it's "unbalanced": go too far away into the west and too close into the north.