The US Census Bureau thread

[ChiSoxRox]

I put in the effort to get to #50 today so we can get Honolulu on the list. It's a bit of a stand-out.

MSAs by weighted population density: #51 - #100 by population

Honolulu.....12,581.9
Oxnard.....5,693.2
Bridgeport.....5,620.4
Stockton.....5,462.7
Madison.....4,833.8
Fresno.....4,518.4
Bakersfield.....4,438.8
New Haven.....4,208.3
Provo.....4,201.0
Allentown.....4,087.5
El Paso.....3,967.0
Albuquerque.....3,635.2
Colorado Springs.....3,345.5
Tucson.....3,285.2
Omaha.....3,275.4
Springfield, MA.....3,271.4
Worcester.....3,150.8
Ogden.....3,111.8
Scranton.....3,087.4
Albany.....3,031.8
Boise.....2,972.9
Rochester.....2,948.2
Spokane.....2,825.8
Syracuse.....2,822.3
Poughkeepsie.....2,808.6
Toledo.....2,655.7
Sarasota.....2,596.3
Harrisburg.....2,561.3
McAllen.....2,543.6
Palm Bay.....2,413.7
Grand Rapids.....2,413.3
Des Moines.....2,357.2
Akron.....2,346.7
Dayton.....2,326.5
Cape Coral.....2,270.5
Wichita.....2,260.7
Tulsa.....2,167.3
Charleston, SC.....1,986.1
Daytona Beach.....1,930.0
Durham.....1,905.6
Lakeland.....1,730.0
Greensboro.....1,700.1
Baton Rouge.....1,653.6
Columbia, SC.....1,521.5
Little Rock.....1,455.1
Knoxville.....1,373.2
Greenville.....1,289.5
Augusta, GA.....1,162.3
Winston-Salem.....1,146.7
Jackson, MS.....1,083.5

My tentative plan is #31-50 tomorrow, #11-30 on Friday, top 10 on Saturday.

Poor Jackson, Mississippi. It has the most shrunken city proper over 100k last decade, and almost certainly the sparsest of the top 100 metros as well.

Originally Posted by yuriandrade

A random comment: since 2010 Census we have discussions about Los Angeles crossing the 4 million barrier. Given the utter bizarre shape of LA city proper, the whole thing is meaningless.

Maybe the focus should be on how LA County crossed the 10 million mark.

IMO, LA city limits look like an elephant's head. The San Fernando Valley is the ear, downtown is the face, the Venice to airport coast is the neck, and the 110 corridor is the trunk down to San Pedro being the curl at the end. Dodger Stadium can even be the eye.

[homebucket]

Originally Posted by ChiSoxRox

I put in the effort to get to #50 today so we can get Honolulu on the list. It's a bit of a stand-out.

#51 - #100 MSAs by weighted population density

54. Stockton.....5,462.7
56. Fresno.....4,518.4
57. Bakersfield.....4,438.8

Highway 99 Central Valley towns represent!

[dimondpark]

Originally Posted by ChiSoxRox

I put in the effort to get to #50 today so we can get Honolulu on the list. It's a bit of a stand-out.

#51 - #100 MSAs by weighted population density

Honolulu.....12,581.9
Oxnard.....5,693.2
Bridgeport.....5,620.4
Stockton.....5,462.7
Madison.....4,833.8
Fresno.....4,518.4
Bakersfield.....4,438.8
New Haven.....4,208.3
Provo.....4,201.0
Allentown.....4,087.5
El Paso.....3,967.0
Albuquerque.....3,635.2
Colorado Springs.....3,345.5
Tucson.....3,285.2
Omaha.....3,275.4
Springfield, MA.....3,271.4
Worcester.....3,150.8
Ogden.....3,111.8
Scranton.....3,087.4
Albany.....3,031.8
Boise.....2,972.9
Rochester.....2,948.2
Spokane.....2,825.8
Syracuse.....2,822.3
Poughkeepsie.....2,808.6
Toledo.....2,655.7
Sarasota.....2,596.3
Harrisburg.....2,561.3
McAllen.....2,543.6
Palm Bay.....2,413.7
Grand Rapids.....2,413.3
Des Moines.....2,357.2
Akron.....2,346.7
Dayton.....2,326.5
Cape Coral.....2,270.5
Wichita.....2,260.7
Tulsa.....2,167.3
Charleston, SC.....1,986.1
Daytona Beach.....1,930.0
Durham.....1,905.6
Lakeland.....1,730.0
Greensboro.....1,700.1
Baton Rouge.....1,653.6
Columbia, SC.....1,521.5
Little Rock.....1,455.1
Knoxville.....1,373.2
Greenville.....1,289.5
Augusta, GA.....1,162.3
Winston-Salem.....1,146.7
Jackson, MS.....1,083.5

My tentative plan is #31-50 tomorrow, #11-30 on Friday, top 10 on Saturday.

Poor Jackson, Mississippi. It has the most shrunken city proper over 100k last decade, and almost certainly the sparsest of the top 100 metros as well.



LA city limits look like an elephant's head. The San Fernando Valley is the ear, downtown is the face, the Venice to airport coast is the neck, and the 110 corridor is the trunk down to San Pedro being the curl at the end. Dodger Stadium can even be the eye.

I once drove to LA for a funeral in Santa Clarita but then had to rush down to San Pedro for a birthday party, and so I remember making a mental note that we are actually traversing the entire city of LA from North to South because we took the 5 into the city all the way to Downtown and then the 110 South all the way to San Pedro--we took that route instead of the 405 because we wanted to stop at the Garment District to get fabric but by the time we got to Downtown, traffic was sooooo BAD that we didnt stop. All told, it took 3 hours.

Writing all of this reminds me of this...
• Video Link

[craigs]

Los Angeles was, from the very start, intended to be a different kind of metropolis than that engendered by the New York model. And the intended difference, which lasted in the regional planning departments for decades, was most explicit about attaining large populations at drastically lower population densities than those found in cities like New York.

It is not a surprise that Los Angeles has fewer people at population densities of 40k ppsm or 100K ppsm--that was always baked into the cake. The surprise is just how dense the metropolis actually became despite itself.

[Yuri]

What would be Los Angeles County population and density, excluding everything north san Gabriel Mountains and that panhandle where Malibu is located?

I guess it would be only 1/3 of the county size and 95% would live there. It's a massive area with a very high density, probably near or above the 10,000 inh/sqm ChiSoxRox is working at.

There's nothing similar in the US/Canada.

[Matthew]

Winston-Salem's MSA is the Yadkin Valley American Viticultural Area (AVA). Viticulture being winegrowing. I think Winston-Salem has two or three national appellations, recognizing the unique wines from Winston-Salem. The Swan Creek AVA is a sub-appelation within the Yadkin Valley AVA and is around the Brushy Mountains in west metro Winston-Salem. Yes, Winston-Salem is North Carolina's Wine Country and some wineries have tasting rooms in downtown or other parts of the city. Winston-Salem also has the North Carolina Wine Festival and a separate food and wine festival. I highly recommend visiting the wineries when visiting Winston-Salem. Yes, the entire metro area is the Yadkin Valley AVA. Someone said something about a ring of rural counties and that is what you see in Winston-Salem. Development drops-off very quickly after leaving the city limits. Interestingly, you can find vineyards on the edge of Winston-Salem's city limits. It's common for upper-income people from the South and Northeast to live-out their dream of winemaking in Winston-Salem. In the past year or two, I've seen a Miami nightclub owner buy a winery, someone from Upstate NY start a new vineyard, and someone from Houston retiring from energy to own his own winery and brewery. Yes, rich people and their dream to make wine. Many do have breweries and some have fun themes. I think there could be one or two small wineries inside the city limits? If you moved to Winston-Salem, you could visit a different winery every weekend for a year and still not try all of them. And there are more on the way.

Also complicating development in the metro area is the terrain. It's very difficult and expensive to expand water and sewer, but in exchange you gain mountains, valleys, ridges, rivers, lakes, waterfalls, etc.,. You can enjoy mountain climbing, rafting, fishing, kayaking, mountain biking, hiking, etc., without leaving the Winston-Salem MSA.

Visit the vineyards on your next trip!
• Video Link

This (below) is one my favorites! You can hike with llamas and carry a picnic. If you look closely, you'll see Winston-Salem's skyline at 4:06 in the video:
• Video Link

• Video Link

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by dave8721

The reason the streets aren't packed with pedestrians is the reason it is so densely populated. Few office towers. Office workers lead to packed streets you see in most cities. NYC's areas with its most crowded sidewalks are not its most densely populated areas either. The packed sidewalks are in Midtown, where are the office towers are, not the Upper East Side where the most dense tracts are.

This isn't really true. Brickell doesn't have high pedestrian density bc it's mostly very autocentric and pedestrian hostile, and the buildings tend to have fortress-like design. Density, by itself, does nothing for pedestrian counts.

And yeah, the UES doesn't have Midtown crowds, but the UES has bigger crowds than basically anywhere in the U.S. outside of NYC. Nowhere likely has Midtown crowds in the developed world.

Third Ave., Lexington Ave. and 86th Street are all packed. All the UES avenues, excepting Park, Fifth and East End Avenue (which are entirely residential) have heavily seven-day pedestrian traffic. Brickell, unlike the UES, is built around cars, and you enter buildings via parking podiums or large driveway dropoffs. The vast majority of UES highrises have no parking, and everything is oriented around pedestrians and transit.

[Yuri]

Originally Posted by Crawford

This isn't really true. Brickell doesn't have high pedestrian density bc it's mostly very autocentric and pedestrian hostile, and the buildings tend to have fortress-like design. Density, by itself, does nothing for pedestrian counts.

And yeah, the UES doesn't have Midtown crowds, but the UES has bigger crowds than basically anywhere in the U.S. outside of NYC. Nowhere likely has Midtown crowds in the developed world.

Third Ave., Lexington Ave. and 86th Street are all packed. All the UES avenues, excepting Park, Fifth and East End Avenue (which are entirely residential) have heavily seven-day pedestrian traffic. Brickell, unlike the UES, is built around cars, and you enter buildings via parking podiums or large driveway dropoffs. The vast majority of UES highrises have no parking, and everything is oriented around pedestrians and transit.

Such environments, with high densities but hostile to pedestrians are relatively common in Brazil. In the 2000's, Brazil was under the economic boom, and many regions verticalized quite fast following this pattern. Londrina's Gleba Palhano or São Paulo growth over its older industrial neighbourhoods are examples of that.

From the mid 2010's, however, developers are much more careful while zoning laws encourage more pedestrian friendly highrises. That's been great for São Paulo.

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by ChiSoxRox

One factor in the Southern metros being so low might be because they will often have a full ring around them of very rural counties, but whereas the very low rural densities out west mean WPD is closer to purely the urban core, there is enough of a rural population in the Southern and Midwest collar counties to drag the numbers down.

This highlights why doing comparative densities (weighted or otherwise) off of the CB's silly MSA/CSA county mash-up game is probably not the best way to go about doing these things.

Chicago's MSA now covers some 12,000 Sq. Miles of land, over 2/3 of which is literally cornfields. I see very little utility in including all of that rural land into a density calc of a "metro area". Even if a weighted calculation makes those areas count less, why would we include all of those peripheral cornfields in the first place?

By no means am I trying to shit on all of your time-consuming work crunching all of these numbers, but if you want a more apples to apples metro area density comparison, waiting for the Urban Area numbers to be released, and then doing a weighted density calc of those tracts would be far superior, IMO.

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by yuriandrade

Such environments, with high densities but hostile to pedestrians are relatively common in Brazil. In the 2000's, Brazil was under the economic boom, and many regions verticalized quite fast following this pattern. Londrina's Gleba Palhano or São Paulo growth over its older industrial neighbourhoods are examples of that.

From the mid 2010's, however, developers are much more careful while zoning laws encourage more pedestrian friendly highrises. That's been great for São Paulo.

On a scale, São Paulo is somewhere between Miami and generic dense very walkable city. SP is dense, but not as walkable as one would assume by looking at just the density numbers alone. But it's overall much, much, much more walkable than Miami. I'm actually impressed that Miami is able to achieve these density numbers and still be a very auto centric place.

[Crawford]

From my experience, excepting maybe Buenos Aires and Rio, almost all major Latin American cities are kinda "hybrid" cities; like LA but on steroids. Dense and tons of midrise apartments but rather autocentric, polycentric, and most middle-upper class households are driving.

This is certainly true for Mexico City, Monterrey, Bogota, SP and Santiago. My relatives in Mexico think it's bizarre when I take the Metro in Mexico City, or walk more than two blocks. Transit is for poors and apartment towers are gated and setback from the street. And security is always tight.

[Yuri]

Originally Posted by iheartthed

On a scale, São Paulo is somewhere between Miami and generic dense very walkable city. SP is dense, but not as walkable as one would assume by looking at just the density numbers alone. But it's overall much, much, much more walkable than Miami. I'm actually impressed that Miami is able to achieve these density numbers and still be a very auto centric place.

Indeed. São Paulo is a bit of mess, and changes a lot from district to district. Older ones, closer to around City Center are usually more pedestrian friendly. Some a bit further, got density, highrises, but it's a bit like Downtown Miami.

Originally Posted by Crawford

From my experience, excepting maybe Buenos Aires and Rio, almost all major Latin American cities are kinda "hybrid" cities; like LA but on steroids. Dense and tons of midrise apartments but rather autocentric, polycentric, and most middle-upper class households are driving.

This is certainly true for Mexico City, Monterrey, Bogota, SP and Santiago. My relatives in Mexico think it's bizarre when I take the Metro in Mexico City, or walk more than two blocks. Transit is for poors and apartment towers are gated and setback from the street. And security is always tight.

Buenos Aires and Rio de Janeiro are indeed different. Copacabana, for instance, is 4 km of residential highrises wall-to-wall. In São Paulo, you struggle to find one block following this pattern, even in older dense districts.

About transit, I wouldn't say São Paulo's middle-class/upper-middle class attitudes are that extreme, but they're very dependent on cars. On the other hand, when travel abroad, they don't mind to ride New York or Paris subways, when São Paulo's is spotless clean with bigger stations and trains.

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by Crawford

From my experience, excepting maybe Buenos Aires and Rio, almost all major Latin American cities are kinda "hybrid" cities; like LA but on steroids. Dense and tons of midrise apartments but rather autocentric, polycentric, and most middle-upper class households are driving.

This is certainly true for Mexico City, Monterrey, Bogota, SP and Santiago. My relatives in Mexico think it's bizarre when I take the Metro in Mexico City, or walk more than two blocks. Transit is for poors and apartment towers are gated and setback from the street. And security is always tight.

São Paulo feels more like an oddball to me, in that it feels much less pedestrian oriented than most other Latin American cities I've been to. But I've never been to Mexico City. I do think that rich Latin Americans tend to shun public transit and walkable cores more than New Yorkers and Europeans, though. The overall attitudes are more in line with most of Anglo America in that regard, but they aren't as hostile to funding transit and public infrastructure as anglos tend to be.

[homebucket]

Originally Posted by iheartthed

On a scale, São Paulo is somewhere between Miami and generic dense very walkable city. SP is dense, but not as walkable as one would assume by looking at just the density numbers alone. But it's overall much, much, much more walkable than Miami. I'm actually impressed that Miami is able to achieve these density numbers and still be a very auto centric place.

It's probably the very high density of highrise residential towers. I don't think this is replicated anywhere else in the US with such repetition. Maybe Manhattan? But I feel like there's more diversity with other types of buildings like offices and such in between. In Miami, it's just entire blocks and blocks residential towers. The parking podiums are so massive that it can provide enough parking for the residents of these towers.

I also wonder how many of them are actually occupied at any given time or if they're just secondary residences.

[ChiSoxRox]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

By no means am I trying to shit on all of your time-consuming work crunching all of these numbers, but if you want a more apples to apples metro area density comparison, waiting for the Urban Area numbers to be released, and then doing a weighted density calc of those tracts would be far superior, IMO.

I agree, but I don't have that patience, and the rural ring effect is probably pretty steady east of the Great Plains. When we get new Urban Area definitions (and also new MSA definitions) if the query tool hasn't broken yet (or we have CSVs of tracts) I'll re-run the numbers.

I already have Madison as an example of the empty collar effect, contrasting Dane County with the 4 county MSA:

Dane County: 5,818 ppsm.
Dane County and three corn field collars: 4,834 ppsm.

So the cornfields do drag down WPD but probably not as big of an effect as I postulated. Rather, it seems (most) southern metros just don't have the 5k+ core tracts required to yank WPD out of the 1k/2k ppsm range. Having dense tracts crater last Census also doesn't help the likes of Jackson, MS.

My plan for the list is probably have the 1M+ MSAs in their own list, a cutoff I like since it just catches that eye popping Honolulu number. Once that's done and we all marvel at NYC lapping the field by a factor like 5 or 6, I'll generate the state WPDs since I have a 2010 list to compare to.

@wwmiv, do you know what the timeframe is for the OMB to release new urban area delineations?

[wwmiv]

Originally Posted by ChiSoxRox

I agree, but I don't have that patience, and the rural ring effect is probably pretty steady east of the Great Plains. When we get new Urban Area definitions (and also new MSA definitions) if the query tool hasn't broken yet (or ee have CSVs of tracts) I'll re-run the numbers.

I already have Madison as an example of the empty collar effect, contrasting Dane County with the 4 county MSA:

Dane County: 5,818 ppsm.
Dane County and three corn field collars: 4,834 ppsm.

So the cornfields do drag down WPD but probably not as big of an effect as I postulated. Rather, it seems (most) southern metros just don't have the 5k+ core tracts required to yank WPD out of the 1k/2k ppsm range. Having dense tracts crater last Census also doesn't help the likes of Jackson, MS.

My plan for the list is probably have the 1M+ MSAs in their own list, a cutoff I like since it just catches that eye popping Honolulu number. Once that's done and we all marvel at NYC lapping the field by a factor like 5 or 6, I'll generate the state WPDs since I have a 2010 list to compare to.

@wwmiv, do you know what the timeframe is for the OMB to release new urban area delineations?

Urban area updates are typically done in years ending in 3, but who knows when with all the delays. It may end up being 2024.

As for the debate about urban v. metro areas and weighted density, it really boils down to the proper interpretation of the numbers. For weighted density, given the strictest possible interpretation of the output is as follows, I don’t think it is a meaningful discussion. You can calculate weighted density for ANY geography and the output will be meaningful:

“The average person in the Madison Metropolitan Area lives in a hypothetical precinct where the residential population density is 4,834 people per square mile.”

“The average person in Dane County lives in a hypothetical precinct where the residential population density is 5,818 people per square mile.”

Well, of course the average person in the metro area lives in a precinct more dense than the core county, because you have excluded the suburban, exurban, and rural commuter belt as if those communities are intimately and intricately tied to the core county’s labor market. That doesn’t make either number meaningless, or less meaningful, and BOTH bring valuable context to the discussion. In fact, breaking out the density numbers by core counties versus outlying counties allows a way to judge the densities of the core versus the fringe.

[dave8721]

Originally Posted by homebucket

It's probably the very high density of highrise residential towers. I don't think this is replicated anywhere else in the US with such repetition. Maybe Manhattan? But I feel like there's more diversity with other types of buildings like offices and such in between. In Miami, it's just entire blocks and blocks residential towers. The parking podiums are so massive that it can provide enough parking for the residents of these towers.

I also wonder how many of them are actually occupied at any given time or if they're just secondary residences.

Depends on the towers. The uber luxury towers (Four Seasons, the towers along Biscayne Blvd north of Ne 8th ST, most south of 5th street towers in Miami Beach, basically all the new Sunny Isles towers) are mostly 2nd/3rd homes or investment properties. Most of the normal towers (basically all of Brickell) are fully occupied, mostly by renters, some others as AirBnB's as well.

[MPLS_Const_Watch]

Originally Posted by ChiSoxRox

Yeah, LA is densifying nicely. Here's the 30K+ ppsm numbers from last week, and LA still stays ahead of the Chicago lakeshore:

New York: 6,919,220
Los Angeles: 599,822
Chicago: 470,391
San Francisco: 439,958
Philadelphia: 334,754
Boston: 311,585
Washington: 241,319
Miami: 156,904
Honolulu: 110,206
Seattle: 96,014
San Diego: 34,839
Houston: 32,092
Madison: 20,845 ()

I'm looking forward to crunching the weighted population density, and seeing if LA pulls off third place. (I am presuming that San Francisco will be in second, and of course NYC will lap everybody else.)

Sorry if this was already posted elsewhere, but do you happen to have a 30k ppsm list that goes down below the 20k pop threshold? If so, would you be willing to share?

[LA21st]

Originally Posted by dave8721

Unless you are looking at Brickell Bay Dr (horrible late 70's/80's construction), pretty much 100% of every other building is ground floor retail (except for the parking/vehicle access points) except for few 80's towers on Brickell Ave. Especially the area west of the metromover tracks, east of the metrorail tracks, where most of the construction is post 2005. If anything there is way more than is needed. It would be much better if the retail was set only along the major through fares like NYC for example.

The reason the streets aren't packed with pedestrians is the reason it is so densely populated. Few office towers. Office workers lead to packed streets you see in most cities. NYC's areas with its most crowded sidewalks are not its most densely populated areas either. The packed sidewalks are in Midtown, where are the office towers are, not the Upper East Side where the most dense tracts are.

Not true for alot of places. In downtown LA, the financial district is quieter than the historic core which has more activity with the residents, shoppers etc. People walk where there are things to walk to. The downtown LA financial district is kind of a bore to be in, like most financial districts.

Michigan Ave is still the busiest part of downtown Chicago, and that's from the tourists/shoppers/residents with some office workers. Same for downtown SF. Union Square/Chinatown is always more teeming than the financial district/SOMA. Same for San Diego with the Gaslamp.

[ChiSoxRox]

Originally Posted by MPLS_Const_Watch

Sorry if this was already posted elsewhere, but do you happen to have a 30k ppsm list that goes down below the 20k pop threshold? If so, would you be willing to share?

I do.

New York: 6,919,220
Los Angeles: 599,822
Chicago: 470,391
San Francisco: 439,958
Philadelphia: 334,754
Boston: 311,585
Washington: 241,319
Miami: 156,904
Honolulu: 110,206
Seattle: 96,014
San Diego: 34,839
Houston: 32,092
Reading: 21,612
Madison: 20,845
Atlanta: 18,484
San Jose: 17,145
Trenton: 16,741
Champaign: 15,719
Provo: 13,203
Columbus: 12,131
Santa Barbara: 11,547
Denver: 10,563
Bridgeport: 10,318
Austin: 10,298
Dallas: 9,948
Minneapolis: 8,634
Phoenix: 8,527
Lansing: 8,481
Baltimore: 8,223
Portland: 7,337
Milwaukee: 7,112
Salinas: 6,194
Boulder: 5,042

(I will continue the weighted population list tomorrow.)