The US Census Bureau thread

[ChiSoxRox]

Originally Posted by wwmiv

How San Antonio is denser than these is anyone’s guess.

Midwestern suburbs fall off a density cliff. Cul de sacs, gigantic lots, forest preserves... The cores may have high density but the suburbs simply overwhelm them numerically.

Eyeballing San Antonio, it looks like even on the outskirts it's a more Western mode of smaller lots mostly filled by housing set along tighter subdivisions than the Midwest.

[wwmiv]

Originally Posted by ChiSoxRox

Midwestern suburbs fall off a density cliff. Cul de sacs, gigantic lots, forest preserves... The cores may have high density but the suburbs simply overwhelm them numerically.

Eyeballing San Antonio, it looks like even on the outskirts it's a more Western mode of smaller lots mostly filled by housing set along tighter subdivisions than the Midwest.

Speaking for San Antonio and Austin those dense developments are a new typology locally and only started getting built within the last five or so years. Most of Bulverde and Boerne and Fair Oaks Ranch and New Braunfels and Canyon Lake and Spring Branch and Wimberley and Bear Creek and Hays and Helotes and Leander and Georgetown and Grey Forest and Lakehills and pretty much everything on the outskirts was initially developed as large acreage homesites. What is remaining of the still agricultural, ranch, and industrial land is now slowly being infilled as those landowners sell out at much higher densities than previously. For the most part, though, the large lot houses are being left alone, so functionally distinct from places like Vegas, which have VERY hard borders and the neighborhoods are at a consistently high suburban density. In places like Austin and San Antonio the census precincts are so large that even they fail to capture the sometimes extreme swings in population density as you move from (what was) one land grant parcel to the next. In fact, I think the only few towns in the suburban belt of either city that began their suburban journey in this cycle and thus don’t have any large and medium acreage homesite development: Jarrell, Hutto, and Manor. Even Kyle and Buda were initially large acreage homesite boomburbs when they started booming and it wasn't until the last five or so years that massive subdivisions have started going in as infill between those neighborhoods.

A good example of this is Fair Oaks Ranch, actually. A new infill neighborhood is Front Gate, the houses have 8-10 spacing, small lots, large presence on their lots, two stories almost uniformly. The Hills and Mirabel are also other examples of this in Fair Oaks Ranch. But in between these nodes are neighborhoods that are 1/10 the population density like Elkhorn and Fair Oaks and Pimlico (I have a friend from Pimlico). The further you go out, the larger the lots generally get and generally the population density declines EXCEPT in these very specific infill neighborhoods and suburban apartment complex ghettoes.

[dc_denizen]

how about MSAs with >4000/sq mile tracts? this IMO best corresponds to the urban/suburban vs exurban/rural split.

4000/sq mile is the cutoff between city+suburbs and everything else, which is always a bit challenging in the US with the exurban fringe surrounding many cities.

[wwmiv]

Originally Posted by dc_denizen

how about MSAs with >4000/sq mile tracts? this IMO best corresponds to the urban/suburban vs exurban/rural split.

4000/sq mile is the cutoff between city+suburbs and everything else, which is always a bit challenging in the US with the exurban fringe surrounding many cities.

I thought that the US defines an urban area as any core collection of tracts over 1000/ppsm plus any adjacent tracts over 500/ppsm equaling 10,000 people or more? Those over 50k (currently, that will be bumped to 100k) can anchor metropolitan areas.

So, would it not be more accurate to say everything in the metro area that is not within the urban area is exurban? I.E. 500/ppsm should be the boundary here, BUT also include 500/ppsm+ tracts in the exurban category that are not contiguous with the main urban area and any ancillary urban areas within the metro area would be considered satellite cities, rather than exurban. Even on the map we've been pulling data from, this is where the color boundary is. Anything beneath 500 is green or yellow and anything above is a shade of blue.

The problem really lies with where to draw the boundary between urban and suburban. E.G. suburban being all of those census tracts in the urban area beneath some threshold of population density which approximates when the following conditions start to predominate: 1. pedestrian orientation and infrastructure; 2. built-to-lot-line (or as near as possible) architecture on generally smaller lots; 3. high quality public transportation; and 4. all-day (or most of the day) activity.

Personally, I think the answer is somewhere between 10k and 20k nationally, but higher in the south (15k) and in the west (20k) than in the midwest or northeast (10k). I.E. I think regional considerations in built environment matter here.

[ChiSoxRox]

I have started accumulating weighted population densities for the top 100 MSAs, starting at #100 (Scranton-Wilkes Barre) and working up to save the big metros for this weekend.


Edit: #86-100 done. Small Southern metros get sparse. Jackson, MS is 1,083.5 ppsm for the entire metro, and several others are already <1500 ppsm. Madison, not surprisingly, is the density "winner" of the #86-100 band.

[wwmiv]

Originally Posted by ChiSoxRox

I have started accumulating weighted population densities for the top 100 MSAs, starting at #100 (Scranton-Wilkes Barre) and working up to save the big metros for this weekend.


Edit: #86-100 done. Small Southern metros get sparse. Jackson, MS is 1,083.5 ppsm for the entire metro, and several others are already <1500 ppsm. Madison, not surprisingly, is the density "winner" of the #86-100 band.

I cannot wait to see numbers. Are you gonna wait to post a complete list or can you pepper us with the data as you compile it?

[ChiSoxRox]

Originally Posted by wwmiv

I cannot wait to see numbers. Are you gonna wait to post a complete list or can you pepper us with the data as you compile it?

I can pepper the list as it forms.

Here are MSAs #81 to 100, might be another batch this evening.

Weighted population density of MSAs, people per square mile
Madison.....4,833.78
Provo.....4,201.02
Springfield, MA.....3,271.37
Ogden.....3,111.75
Scranton.....3,087.35
Spokane.....2,825.75
Syracuse.....2,822.31
Poughkeepsie.....2,808.55
Toledo.....2,655.67
Harrisburg.....2,561.26
Palm Bay.....2,413.70
Des Moines.....2,357.15
Akron.....2,346.65
Wichita.....2,260.74
Deltona.....1,929.98
Durham.....1,905.55
Lakeland.....1,729.98
Augusta, GA.....1,162.26
Winston-Salem.....1,146.66
Jackson, MS.....1,083.51

[wwmiv]

I am surprised Madison is not slightly denser. And moderately surprised at how dense Provo is, I would have expected more similar to Ogden. Neither of those numbers matter though as both Provo and Ogden are now the same urban area - just eyeballing the tract map - as SLC and will thus likely be merged into a single MSA as SLC.

There are a few of these, Denver/Boulder is a good example.

[ChiSoxRox]

Originally Posted by wwmiv

I am surprised Madison is not slightly denser. And moderately surprised at how dense Provo is, I would have expected more similar to Ogden.

(Never mind about Provo).

As for Madison, the rural collar counties will pull the WPD down, although the super dense core of Madison is dwarfed by the rest of the city anyways. Dane County by itself has a WPD of 5,818 ppsm.

As for merging MSAs, looks like we get new definitions every two years or so, but I wouldn't be surprised if OMB puts together new post-Census definitions. (Poughkeepsie being out of NYC is another glaring omission.)

[wwmiv]

Originally Posted by ChiSoxRox

The desert will be a benefit for Provo. If the rural population is effectively zero, weighted density is just going to return the built up area, and Provo has the denser suburban form of the West that gives Phoenix and Las Vegas higher 10k thresholds than you might expect.

As for Madison, the rural collar counties will pull the WPD down, although the super dense core of Madison is dwarfed by the rest of the city anyways. Dane County by itself has a WPD of 5,818 ppsm.

As for merging MSAs, looks like we get new definitions every two years or so, but I wouldn't be surprised if OMB puts together new post-Census definitions. (Poughkeepsie being out of NYC is another glaring omission.)

Yes, and they only do urban areas once every ten years, so MSA merges on this basis (where two, in this case three, formerly separate urban areas have merged) only happen in the first MSA/CSA update after each decennial census. In between census updates, MSA/CSA revisions happen on the basis of the ACS commuter statistics (which only generally happens once or twice a decade). Two separate MSAs can be combined through this data IF all of the core counties of one metro area as a group (rather than any one county individually) have a combined commuter share into the core counties of another metro area above the 25% threshold. Many of these OMB bulletins are simply fixes to errors made on the basis of mistakes in the data. A good example of this is that two of those bulletins contain very few changes including a change to add a Marble Falls, TX mSA and an Austin, TX CSA and then to delete it because the urban area for Marble Falls had not actually reached 10k yet and so did not qualify for an mSA and so then Austin thus did not then have a CSA. They also put out bulletins describing changes to the method itself, but that is typically reserved to a once-in-a-decade bulletin. Thus, you typically see six maybe seven bulletins a decade.

Years and years ago, Dallas and Fort Worth’s formerly separate metro areas, for instance, were merged on the basis of their urban areas becoming merged rather than on the basis of commuter data.

As for Provo: Provo is between mountains and a lake and its suburbs are in an agricultural valley, so development is more akin to Austin and San Antonio. Same for SLC. Same for Ogden. This is definitely not a Vegas or a Phoenix. Check out the suburban and exurban periphery on Google Earth.

Edit: okay, the counties do include desert, so I suppose you have a valid point, but I still contend that their numbers are driven down relative to a Vegas or a Phoenix because they do also include a variety of less dense suburban and exurban development in addition to the desert rather than being uniformly high density suburban developments right to the urban area edge (like Vegas).

[wwmiv]

Originally Posted by ChiSoxRox

Never mind.

Heyyy what?

[SIGSEGV]

Originally Posted by wwmiv

Heyyy what?

I imagine ChiSoxRox found a bug.

[ChiSoxRox]

Originally Posted by SIGSEGV

I imagine ChiSoxRox found a bug.

No, personal frustration on my end, part online, part real world coding. Damn FORTRAN bugs. Then found out I had lost my password here and had to reset.

Here's #67 to 100:

MSAs
Oxnard....5,693.21
Stockton....5,462.68
Madison....4,833.78
New Haven....4,208.29
Provo....4,201.02
Allentown....4,087.54
El Paso....3,966.97
Colorado Springs....3,345.52
Springfield, MA....3,271.37
Ogden....3,111.75
Scranton....3,087.35
Boise....2,972.89
Spokane....2,825.75
Syracuse....2,822.31
Poughkeepsie....2,808.55
Toledo....2,655.67
Sarasota....2,596.29
Harrisburg....2,561.26
Palm Bay....2,413.70
Des Moines....2,357.15
Akron....2,346.65
Dayton....2,326.49
Cape Coral....2,270.47
Wichita....2,260.74
Charleston, SC....1,986.08
Daytona Beach....1,929.98
Durham....1,905.55
Lakeland....1,729.98
Greensboro....1,700.14
Columbia, SC....1,521.49
Little Rock....1,455.12
Augusta, GA....1,162.26
Winston-Salem....1,146.66
Jackson, MS....1,083.51

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.

When I get to Atlanta and how it covers like a fifth of Georgia, I'll post at least three numbers in commentary to demonstrate: Fulton + DeKalb alone, Fulton + neighbors, full MSA.

But since I am using the same Census query tool as before, and that is limited to 1000 tracts at a go, the big metros will have to be multiple pulls stitched together. I can't wait to see how goliath New York's number is, but that is also nearly 6,000 tracts to copy paste into Excel!

[Yuri]

Originally Posted by wwmiv

I am surprised Madison is not slightly denser. And moderately surprised at how dense Provo is, I would have expected more similar to Ogden. Neither of those numbers matter though as both Provo and Ogden are now the same urban area - just eyeballing the tract map - as SLC and will thus likely be merged into a single MSA as SLC.

There are a few of these, Denver/Boulder is a good example.

To me, Salt Lake City CSA is the real metro area for SLC. Looking at Google Maps, it's a single urban area, and even the growth pattern follows a very traditional urban sprawl logic: Salt Lake City MSA boxed in the middle growing slowly while Ogden MSA and specially Provo MSA, with very a very high growth as they are the areas where the urban footprint can expand.

Originally Posted by ChiSoxRox

As for merging MSAs, looks like we get new definitions every two years or so, but I wouldn't be surprised if OMB puts together new post-Census definitions. (Poughkeepsie being out of NYC is another glaring omission.)

Or Fairfield County, which is de facto part of New York metro area since the 1950's at least.

[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.

[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.