The US Census Bureau thread

[ChiSoxRox]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

Frankly, I find LA's 20K+ ppsm figure even more impressive.

10K+ ppsm can be fairly urban in some circumstances, but it can also be a kind of limbo zone of tightly packed houses and very lackluster retail corridors.

But at 20K+ ppsm, things tend to lean more in the urban direction more often than not.

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.)

[LA21st]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

Frankly, I find LA's 20K+ ppsm figure even more impressive.

10K+ ppsm can be fairly urban in some circumstances, but it can also be a kind of limbo zone of tightly packed houses and very lackluster retail corridors.
8
But at 20K+ ppsm, things tend to lean more in the urban direction more often than not.

Yea, there's been a ton of neighborhoods getting denser.
Its kinda of flown under the radar on these types of forums because they're not high-rises .
I can honestly see Koreatown type density going all the way towards the Hollywood Hills at some point.

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by ChiSoxRox

Here's the 30K+ ppsm numbers from last week

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 ()

wait, is that really a full ranking of the entire nation at 30K+ ppsm?

is little old madison really #13 on this metric in the whole country?

and #3 for interior cities after only chicago and houston? what!?!

i know there's gotta be some UW dorm funny business going on there, but it's still strange to see such an outlier.

[the urban politician]

^ It’s the power of the isthmus

[Steely Dan]

^ geography does factor into these things. it's by no means the final word, but it does matter.


source: https://www.wiscnews.com/news/state-...c489ee21e.html

[Yuri]

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.)

That's high density. Even in Europe or Latin America only neighbourhoods widely seen as dense reach such density.

New York is in its own world, but Los Angeles numbers (Philadelphia too) are very impressive. Chicago and San Francisco are doing ok, but that was more expected.

[ChiSoxRox]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

^ geography does factor into these things. it's by no means the final word, but it does matter.


source: https://www.wiscnews.com/news/state-...c489ee21e.html

The 30k+ census tracts aren't little single-block-dorm tracts either. There are three such tracts, and all three are over 6500 people, forming a continuous belt from south of campus to the north shore of the isthmus. Basically, the western half of the isthmus, between campus and the Capitol. The Capitol tract itself is like a third parkland yet still at 25k ppsm.

To add to the fun, all three are over 40k ppsm, meaning this is the national 40k+ list.

New York: 6,387,118
Chicago: 216,741
San Francisco: 215,659
Los Angeles: 194,261
Boston: 155,130
Washington: 121,492
Philadelphia: 120,399
Miami: 76,170
Honolulu: 64,446
Seattle: 41,781
Madison: 20,845 (leapfrogging San Diego and Houston)

The central tract (the orange towers in the picture and environs) is 99k per square mile, meaning Madison is one of nine metros in the entire country to reach those heights.

Madison is impressive.

[Steely Dan]

^ crazy!

and those three 40k+ tracts of central madison grew very nicely this past decade:

CT 16.03: +3,319 | +70%
CT 16.06: +2,051 | +32%
CT 16.04: +1,545 | +27%

[ChiSoxRox]

As a quick warm up for weighted population density:

Milwaukee MSA: 5,024 ppsm
Madison MSA: 4,834 ppsm

I'll compile at least the top 100 metros and do a megalist of weighted population densities, but that will not be done until at least this weekend.

[dave8721]

Originally Posted by dave8721

Brickell in Miami is pretty close. It has Miami's 3 100k tracts. The one tract between those 3 100k tracts is a 99k density tract. With another 96k density tract right next to it. That's 5 95k+ density tracts all forming basically a square and covering a good chunk of "east of the metrorail tracks" Brickell. As a whole Brickell's density probably falls in the 80k range. Might be higher if it wasn't brought down by the large 40k tract that includes the big properties that are the future phases of Brickell CityCentre just south of the river.

Going a littler further into the brickell tracts and how they are not just a few random isolated tracts. Here are the densities of the tracts that make up the heart of the Brickell neighborhood (east of the Metrorail tracks from 8th st to around 13th streets.

this area: https://www.google.com/maps/place/Br...!4d-80.1958755

Total pop of central Brickell: 16,012. The density of the neighborhood is probably around 95K. The one odd-ball low density tract hosts a few office towers and a big vacant lot on the bay that is set to host 2 1000+ foot residential towers.

tract: density (population total)
67.21: 139,084 ppm (2620)
67.17: 126,108 ppm (2309)
67.19: 108,677 ppm (2934)
67.18: 99,419 ppm (3979)
67.22: 96,298 ppm (1754)
67.13: 64,869 ppm (2416)

67.07: 73,014 ppm (5076) *Brickell Key, not really part of the neighborhood but another dense neighbor.

[cabasse]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

wait, is that really a full ranking of the entire nation at 30K+ ppsm?

is little old madison really #13 on this metric in the whole country?

and #3 for interior cities after only chicago and houston? what!?!

i know there's gotta be some UW dorm funny business going on there, but it's still strange to see such an outlier.

quite impressive for madison. atlanta is at 18,484 for 30k+ across 5 tracts, and 10,046 for 40k+ across 3 tracts.

[wwmiv]

Originally Posted by ChiSoxRox

As a quick warm up for weighted population density:

Milwaukee MSA: 5,024 ppsm
Madison MSA: 4,834 ppsm

I'll compile at least the top 100 metros and do a megalist of weighted population densities, but that will not be done until at least this weekend.

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

[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.

[homebucket]

Originally Posted by dimondpark

Thank you ChiSoxRox for the data.

Half of Los Angeles lives in areas that are 10,000+ppsm, I already figured that I think, but to actually see it in a stat is neat. What a fantastic rebuttal to haters that bemoan the place about sprawl.

MSAs by % Population 10,000+ Per Square Mile
58.0% New York: 11,694,534
50.0% Los Angeles: 6,611,283
43.6% San Francisco: 2,073,127
38.8% Honolulu: 395,854
36.0% San Jose: 720,560
29.3% Boston: 1,448,764
27.1% Chicago: 2,614,012
26.4% Salinas: 116,532
25.3% Philadelphia: 1,580,169
24.7% San Diego: 816,530
...

Do you mind compiling the data for 20,000+ ppsm? I also feel like 10,000 is a bit too low of a cut off. It's interesting to see that San Jose is 5th on this list and Salinas (!) is 8th on the list, but like others have mentioned, its pretty evident especially when you're on the ground in these places, that it's just dense autocentric suburbia. 20,000+ should be a better sweet spot for identifying cities that have more urbanized density.

[ChiSoxRox]

The 20k threshold list was calculated several pages back. Here is the percentage list.

Originally Posted by dimondpark

Great work. I wanted to calculate the proportion of each metro area listed...

Percentage of Metro Area(MSA) Population in 20,000PPSM Census Tracts:
45.4% New York: 9,151,543
18.9% San Francisco: 899,765
17.9% Honolulu: 182,167
14.7% Boston: 727,666
14.5% Los Angeles: 1,919,006
13.4% Philadelphia: 841,729
12.8% Chicago: 1,238,801
10.0% Champaign: 22,271
7.8% Washington: 501,510
6.4% Miami: 396,021
5.2% Madison: 35,514
4.9% Bridgeport: 47,791
4.9% Salinas: 21,351
3.9% Seattle: 160,101
3.4% Allentown: 29,319
3.2% San Jose: 64,724
3.1% Milwaukee: 47,988
3.1% San Diego: 103,421
2.6% Worcester: 26,374
2.3% Baltimore: 67,095
2.3% Providence: 39,442
1.6% Denver: 49,423
1.5% Portland: 38,057
1.4% Columbus: 31,592
1.4% Minneapolis: 52,998
1.2% Houston: 88,080
1.1% Las Vegas: 26,114
1.0% Austin: 23,224
0.7% Dallas: 54,893
0.4% Atlanta: 26,589
0.4% Phoenix: 20,351

[homebucket]

^ Thanks!

[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.

[craigs]

Let's have a round of applause for everyone who has been crunching the numbers, especially ChiSoxRox. Great stuff!

The lists at different density caps are fascinating. Some metros are top-heavy with very high inner core densities but sparse suburban hinterlands, like Chicago, some metros are very light on density throughout their entire spans, like Atlanta, and some metros have more consistent densities throughout, like Los Angeles.

And the lists with higher caps like 30k and 40k show just how rare that sort of density is in the US outside of the New York metro.

[dimondpark]

Originally Posted by homebucket

Do you mind compiling the data for 20,000+ ppsm? I also feel like 10,000 is a bit too low of a cut off. It's interesting to see that San Jose is 5th on this list and Salinas (!) is 8th on the list, but like others have mentioned, its pretty evident especially when you're on the ground in these places, that it's just dense autocentric suburbia. 20,000+ should be a better sweet spot for identifying cities that have more urbanized density.

California suburbs are more dense than most areas it seems. Anyway:

Percentage of the MSA pop in 20,000+ppsm census tracts:
45.4% New York: 9,151,543
18.9% San Francisco: 899,765
17.9% Honolulu: 182,167
14.7% Boston: 727,666
14.5% Los Angeles: 1,919,006
13.4% Philadelphia: 841,729
12.8% Chicago: 1,238,801
10.0% Champaign: 22,271
7.8% Washington: 501,510
6.4% Miami: 396,021
5.2% Madison: 35,514
4.9% Bridgeport: 47,791
4.9% Salinas: 21,351
3.9% Seattle: 160,101
3.4% Allentown: 29,319
3.2% San Jose: 64,724
3.1% Milwaukee: 47,988
3.1% San Diego: 103,421
2.6% Worcester: 26,374
2.3% Baltimore: 67,095
2.3% Providence: 39,442
1.6% Denver: 49,423
1.5% Portland: 38,057
1.4% Columbus: 31,592
1.4% Minneapolis: 52,998
1.2% Houston: 88,080
1.1% Las Vegas: 26,114
1.0% Austin: 23,224
0.7% Dallas: 54,893
0.4% Atlanta: 26,589
0.4% Phoenix: 20,351

[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.