Yeah, NYC is the undisputed density champion of North America, truly head and shoulders above all others.
Would you be willing to query results for 10,000+ ppsm, at least for the top 10 maybe? I can't seem to get the thing to work for me.
Top metros by total population over 10,000 ppsm:
New York: 11,694,534
Los Angeles: 6,611,283
Chicago: 2,614,012
San Francisco: 2,073,127
Philadelphia: 1,580,169
Boston: 1,448,764
Miami: 1,398,475
Washington: 1,230,663
San Diego: 816,530
San Jose: 720,560
Seattle: 505,840
Houston: 495,906
Las Vegas: 441,510
Honolulu: 395,854
Dallas: 390,927
Baltimore: 375,152
Riverside: 339,111
Phoenix: 328,143
Denver: 315,809
Providence: 301,925
Biggest surprise for me was how much lower Baltimore still is compared to the other BosWash nodes, as well as San Diego beating out Seattle for a place in the top 10.
Biggest surprise for me was how much lower Baltimore still is compared to the other BosWash nodes, as well as San Diego beating out Seattle for a place in the top 10.
Excellent! Thanks for putting in the hard work! New York is tops as expected, and Los Angeles comes in a solid second.
Some things stand out on the 10,000+ ppsm list. First, historic East Coast metros such as Philadelphia and Boston have enough traditional, pre-war urbanity to offset the ring of very low-density sprawl surrounding them to rank highly.
Second, this density level cutoff manages to capture the relatively high densities of Western suburbia, as found in metros that do not have the dense, traditional urban fabric found in historic metros back east--Las Vegas (!), Riverside, Phoenix, and San Jose all make the list.
Finally, with the exception of Chicago, the Midwestern cities are absent. I suspect that is because Midwestern metros nowadays generally lack the density of old, traditional urbanity like that of the legacy East Coast metros, and they also lack the huge swathes of tightly-packed suburban development common in Western metros.
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Excellent! Thanks for putting in the hard work! New York is tops as expected, and Los Angeles comes in a solid second.
Finally, with the exception of Chicago, the Midwestern cities are absent. I suspect that is because Midwestern metros nowadays generally lack the density of old, traditional urbanity like that of the legacy East Coast metros, and they also lack the huge swathes of tightly-packed suburban development common in Western metros.
You're welcome! I have the list down to 20,000 people over 10,000 per square mile, a list with 74 metros at the moment. (There may be a college town or small Eastern MSA I've missed.)
But indeed, the Midwestern cities that tended to have dense, traditional urbanity are exactly the ones that were ravaged by de-industrialization. If this list was calculated in 1950, Detroit, St. Louis, and Cleveland would probably all be in the top 10. Now, Detroit is 29th, Cleveland is 38th, and St. Louis is 50th. Orlando and Stockton have more people in tracts over 10k ppsm than St. Louis.
(Atlanta is #27, one spot below Ventura County, the Oxnard MSA.)
Cincinnati: 46,615
Lancaster: 46,505
Tampa Bay: 43,634
York: 25,122
Charlotte: 21,929
There are some shockingly low population densities in some cities, even at 10,000 per square mile, which is almost baseline urban density to me. A few comparisons that really stand out are Atlanta losing out to Oxnard, Pittsburgh barely beating out Allentown which itself edges Cleveland, Springfield Mass beating St. Louis, Cincinnati and Tampa sandwiching Lancaster PA, and York PA topping Charlotte.
Small PA cities look impressive on this list, but some of these booming Sunbelt cities almost don't deserve the name "city". (I left some other low performers off like Austin, San Antonio and Salt Lake City.) And I would have thought Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Cincinnati, and St. Louis would have held onto their density better.
I think it's more accurate to say which southern city is urbanized the most. Those numbers alone don't show how fast they're evolving.
Quote:
Originally Posted by craigs
Excellent! Thanks for putting in the hard work! New York is tops as expected, and Los Angeles comes in a solid second.
Some things stand out on the 10,000+ ppsm list. First, historic East Coast metros such as Philadelphia and Boston have enough traditional, pre-war urbanity to offset the ring of very low-density sprawl surrounding them to rank highly.
Second, this density level cutoff manages to capture the relatively high densities of Western suburbia, as found in metros that do not have the dense, traditional urban fabric found in historic metros back east--Las Vegas (!), Riverside, Phoenix, and San Jose all make the list.
Finally, with the exception of Chicago, the Midwestern cities are absent. I suspect that is because Midwestern metros nowadays generally lack the density of old, traditional urbanity like that of the legacy East Coast metros, and they also lack the huge swathes of tightly-packed suburban development common in Western metros.
Maybe a higher thresold (15,000+ ppsm) would provide us a better picture of urbanity, leaving pretty much all those dense western suburbs out.
The 10,000 line is interesting. For the Western and Midwestern "early 1900s house on a smallish lot" vernacular, neighborhoods are often in the 7,000 to 9,000/sm range. They cross the 10,000 threshhold when there's a decent amount of multifamily infill, but it doesn't have to be a ton. Or in some cases when they're poorer and full of big families.
PS I'd go slightly easy on Pittsburgh etc...they have a lot of tracts that mix densish areas with wide swaths of greenbelt. If the greenbelts were their own tracts (like Central Park in NYC), they'd score a bit higher.
Biggest surprise for me was how much lower Baltimore still is compared to the other BosWash nodes, as well as San Diego beating out Seattle for a place in the top 10.
Also interesting that SF + SJ > Chicago for 3rd place in the US.
You're welcome! I have the list down to 20,000 people over 10,000 per square mile, a list with 74 metros at the moment. (There may be a college town or small Eastern MSA I've missed.)
But indeed, the Midwestern cities that tended to have dense, traditional urbanity are exactly the ones that were ravaged by de-industrialization. If this list was calculated in 1950, Detroit, St. Louis, and Cleveland would probably all be in the top 10. Now, Detroit is 29th, Cleveland is 38th, and St. Louis is 50th. Orlando and Stockton have more people in tracts over 10k ppsm than St. Louis.
(Atlanta is #27, one spot below Ventura County, the Oxnard MSA.)
There were easily +1 million people in 20k ppsm in just the city of Detroit, Highland Park, and Hamtramck from 1930 - 1950. The city of Detroit would've been in the top 5 for sure from about 1930 - 1960. Check out pages 7 - 9 of this appendix to a paper that Princeton published on the structure of today's Detroit: https://www.princeton.edu/~erossi/RD_App.pdf
Detroit's population was tilted towards +20,000 ppsm census tracts until about 1960. Post 1950, the historically densest areas started to decline, and by 1970 the bottom fell out. On the other hand, the medium density areas encircling the core of the city remained relatively stable after 1950, and in some cases they actually got more dense in the 1950-1970 era.
Black people left the city of St. Louis in large numbers in the past decade, as St. Louis and St. Charles counties saw more of the residents move in, according to new U.S. Census Bureau data, which make clear that suburban and exurban areas are diversifying.
Those numbers, in conjunction with the metro's slow growth as it falls to the 21st largest in the U.S., are a "huge problem for our city and for our region," said Neal Richardson, leader of St. Louis Development Corp., the city's development agency.
The city lost more than 24,000 Black residents from 2010 to 2020, driving a total net loss of nearly 18,000 residents. Over that period, the city gained 2,150 residents who identify as white. The city in total ended with about 301,000 residents, down 5.5%. Of those, 49.2% identify as white, up from 45.8% a decade ago, and 45.4% identify as Black, down from 50.7%.
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