Density in urban neighbourhoods - Page 2

giallo · #21 Posted **Jun 4, 2026, 5:30 PM**

Vancouver's densest neighbourhood: The West End.

Docere · #22 Posted **Jun 4, 2026, 5:53 PM**

The Wikipedia article on Coal Harbour puts the population at 10,441 and density at 18000 per sq km.

The article on Yaletown doesn't include population or density figures.

Changing City · #23 Posted **Jun 4, 2026, 9:01 PM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by Docere

The Wikipedia article on Coal Harbour puts the population at 10,441 and density at 18000 per sq km.

The article on Yaletown doesn't include population or density figures.

If you search for a map of Yaletown, you can find a wide range of opinions about the boundaries. Heritage groups only reference the original warehouse district, which is more commercial than residential, and so has lower residential density. Realtors like to include everything as far south as False Creek. If you choose something in between, covered by this map, and extract the block data from Census Mapper, you get an area with 11,753 residents in 2021, with a residential density of 45,603 per sq km.

[New Yaletown Community Association]

someone123 · #24 Posted **Jun 4, 2026, 9:33 PM**

I was looking at Halifax a bit more and it is starting to get some areas that are pretty dense.

For example, the census tract around the east end of Spring Garden Road (0008.00), which includes some empty lots still, is 0.5 square km and jumped from 2,778 people in 2016 to 5,203 in 2021. It still has a lot of construction happening; I can think of 2 developments under construction that add up to around 800 units. I could see this census tract hitting 10,000 people in another census period or two with a density of around 20,000 per square km. That would be the outcome if the remaining empty parts are filled in in a way similar to what's already been built over the last decade.

That would probably be the densest area, but there are a handful of others that have really taken off and will either show up in the 2026 census or 2031.

Docere · #25 Posted **Jun 6, 2026, 4:20 AM**

Some population data for Montreal districts and smaller subareas.

https://www.centraide-mtl.org/en/neighbourhood-profiles/

Docere · #26 Posted **Jun 7, 2026, 5:52 PM**

Toronto Core's 16 districts:

someone123 · #27 Posted **Jun 7, 2026, 6:14 PM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by Docere

There's a sense that Toronto "cheats" its way to density through "detached houses + high rises." Or at least doesn't build good urban neighbourhoods through that approach.

This is from the skyline thread.

I would frame it like this:

- There are valid complaints about Toronto's approach to allowing development on a small percentage of total land while banning most of it in large swaths of residential areas. The towers end up packing a lot of density into a tiny area and linear neighbourhoods aren't as good or as efficient as places you can explore in 2D. Because Toronto is a fast-growing newer city on average, there is a lot of bungalow belt and not a lot of the kind of older mixed use land that is considered a valid target for infill under the development regime. And it's pretty bad that the areas with the most interesting buildings and best urbanism end up as prime targets for condo development while inferior areas don't get improved.

- But you might not want to tear down or change too much of the old building stock in Toronto, and mixed neighbourhoods can be quite good even if they don't look like Stockholm. 2-3 storey rowhouse neighbourhoods that have a mix of commercial conversions and infill can be great.

- We also have a currently somewhat deflating housing bubble that makes a lot of smaller projects uneconomical due to extremely high land costs, so it would be good to try to address that. It's hard to add "gentle density" projects when the flats end up working out to $1.2M each.

Nouvellecosse · #28 Posted **Jun 7, 2026, 6:55 PM**

I personally wouldn't say that the house+highrise thing is "cheating" necessarily, but I do think it results in neighbourhoods that are inferior for more people when compared to some alternate, similarly dense configurations. However, it's still better than if there were just houses without the highrise nodes because it's still density which has inherent benefits regardless of the form, unless we're talking about shantytowns or something. As Someone pointed out earlier, density still preserves farm or forest land. And I would add that it also reduces the amount of infrastructure required per person and the average travel distance between people and various destinations, both of which affects people's lived experiences.

If you have one place that's twice as dense as another, you'd need to pay to connect twice the area with infrastructure like water, sewer, power, roads, etc. and with some of them it's more than double. For instance, with roads, it isn't just a matter of extending the same infrastructure farther because you also have to handle the shift to less efficient forms of infrastructure since lower density is so highly correlated with increases automobile usage. So with lower density, people either need to make due with lower quality infrastructure, pay higher taxes, or see less of other spending. And to refer again to the prior thread, that's one area where I think data really is important because it's often needed to illustrate the connection between people's experiences and things that affect them indirectly.

Normally if there is less density, people aren't going to draw the connection between that and government costs or travel distances. They'll just say stuff like, "Man this city is so broken! We pay so much tax yet the city struggles to provide basic services. Such corruption (drain the swam, stop the gravy train, and such)." But it wouldn't even occur to them that their tax dollars could do more if the city was more compact. In fact, I often have more trouble with people wanting to focus only on direct experience while neglecting the indirect effects of the wider system than i do with people overly focusing on data. They focus on stuff like how much living space they have or how quiet or charming their street is but not understand the role that such spacious (low density) development plays in the wider system.

Docere · #29 Posted **Jun 7, 2026, 7:35 PM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nouvellecosse

Normally if there is less density, people aren't going to draw the connection between that and government costs or travel distances. They'll just say stuff like, "Man this city is so broken! We pay so much tax yet the city struggles to provide basic services. Such corruption (drain the swam, stop the gravy train, and such)." But it wouldn't even occur to them that their tax dollars could do more if the city was more compact.

That's a good point. Yes, road infrastructure is very expensive.

Maybe the Fords are a product of "missing middle" (or lack of) planning.

Wigs · #30 Posted **Jun 7, 2026, 8:45 PM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by Docere

Toronto Core's 16 districts:

Docere, any idea how many people live and work in this 16 district area of Toronto?

Docere · #31 Posted **Jun 8, 2026, 3:12 AM**

2021 census population was 273,543.

MolsonExport · #32 Posted **Jun 8, 2026, 1:33 PM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by Brick&BRT

https://www.tomforth.co.uk/circlepopulations/?lat=49.89252&long=-97.13684&distance_km=3

Above is a neat tool I've been playing around with; for Canadian cities it seems to be accurate. It's neat to be able to set a radius and get a population estimate for a particular chunk of your city.

That one is fun to play with.

for 3km around a point in the Plateau Mt. Royal in Montreal, I get 329,649 people. "The circle also contains, 1032 bus stops, 0 tram stops, and 15 metro and train stops."

https://www.tomforth.co.uk/circlepopulations/?lat=45.53742&long=-73.58467&distance_km=3

MolsonExport · #33 Posted **Jun 8, 2026, 1:36 PM**

Toronto, 3km radius roughly centred at Ossington and Harbord street: 300,361 people. "The circle also contains, 468 bus stops, 265 tram stops, and 15 metro and train stops."

https://www.tomforth.co.uk/circlepopulations/?lat=43.65703&long=-79.42351&distance_km=3

MolsonExport · #34 Posted **Jun 8, 2026, 1:38 PM**

Best I could get for the World's second largest London (3km radius): Estimated population within circle in 2025: 82,202

The circle also contains, 11 bus stops, 0 tram stops, and 0 metro and train stops (pathetic)

https://www.tomforth.co.uk/circlepopulations/?lat=42.95018&long=-81.23081&distance_km=3

MolsonExport · #35 Posted **Jun 8, 2026, 1:45 PM**

Vancouver (3km radius roughly centred at West Broadway and Oak Street): 253,948 people. "The circle also contains, 575 bus stops, 2 tram stops, and 13 metro and train stops."

https://www.tomforth.co.uk/circlepopulations/?lat=49.26471&long=-123.12442&distance_km=3

Docere · #36 Posted **Jun 8, 2026, 3:35 PM**

When I set Toronto's center point at Queen's Park I get a population of 316,638.

https://www.tomforth.co.uk/circlepopulations/?lat=43.66112&long=-79.39212&distance_km=3

Pavlov · #37 Posted **Jun 8, 2026, 3:57 PM**

Calgary @ 144,466: https://www.tomforth.co.uk/circlepopulations/?lat=51.05563&long=-114.07199&distance_km=3

Kingston @ 52,975: https://www.tomforth.co.uk/circlepopulations/?lat=44.24285&long=-76.51093&distance_km=3

For fun:

Hong Kong @ 1,328,065: https://www.tomforth.co.uk/circlepopulations/?lat=22.32704&long=114.17687&distance_km=3

Shanghai @ 1,693,481: https://www.tomforth.co.uk/circlepopulations/?lat=31.25477&long=121.45720&distance_km=3

hipster duck · #38 Posted **Jun 8, 2026, 4:10 PM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by Docere

When I set Toronto's center point at Queen's Park I get a population of 316,638.

https://www.tomforth.co.uk/circlepopulations/?lat=43.66112&long=-79.39212&distance_km=3

The highest I got was 350,523 if you centre it at Harbord and Brunswick. I get that these are imperfect and are based on census geographies, but you still have to move west to cut off natural features like Rosedale valley and the lake, but also low density rich areas like Rosedale and Rathnelly.

Some of these cities I don't know too well, but here are some other "highest scores" I got for other cities:

NYC - 638,000 (centered just south of Sheep Meadow in Central Park)

Los Angeles - 349,000 (centered at Lafayette Park)
San Francisco - 337,000 (centered somewhere in the Western Addition)
Montreal - 321,003 (centered at Masson and De Lorimier)

Boston - 261,000 (near MIT)
Vancouver - 250,000 (somewhere near the southern foot of the Cambie Bridge)
Chicago - 245,000 (forgot exactly where, but somewhere near Clybourn Metra station). Chicago was in a "lower" tier than I was expecting.
Philly - 237,000 (somewhere near Rittenhouse Sq)
DC - 222,000 (near Howard U)

Pavlov · #39 Posted **Jun 8, 2026, 4:55 PM**

someone123 · #40 Posted **Jun 8, 2026, 4:57 PM**

It is fun to look at, but to a certain degree this measures how circle-shaped the residential areas of a given city are. Single-use high-density residential with no parks or water would yield the highest numbers. You could probably get a really high number in a dystopian Chinese city with a large enough blob of factory worker housing. Cities like NYC, Vancouver, or Boston are not represented as well.

I think something like the census mapper is a lot more informative. The main issue there is the census data is getting old and might be a bit odd due to 2021 and covid.