The US Census Bureau thread

[Klippenstein]

Originally Posted by dimondpark

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

Isn't San Jose part of the San Francisco MSA? So it would be already counted in its percentage right?

[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.

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by dimondpark

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

I'm more surprised that L.A. outperforms Chicago percentage-wise at 20k ppsm than 10k ppsm.

[dimondpark]

Originally Posted by Klippenstein

Isn't San Jose part of the San Francisco MSA? So it would be already counted in its percentage right?

No, San Jose is not part of the San Francisco MSA, but they merged into a CSA.

[edale]

Originally Posted by dave8721

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.

And yet basically entirely dead at street level. It's hard to find any ground floor retail at all poking around streetview. Just blank walls and parking/vehicle access points.

[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?

[Yuri]

Originally Posted by edale

And yet basically entirely dead at street level. It's hard to find any ground floor retail at all poking around streetview. Just blank walls and parking/vehicle access points.

Never been there, but it's the impression I had about Downtown Miami. To say it's booming is an understatement, density already reached incredibly high levels, yet it seems the urban feel is still lacking.

[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.)

[paytonc]

Originally Posted by ChiSoxRox

Remaining counties at 90k ppsm (the last bin with Manhattan over 1M): Manhattan: 1,187,006...
Philadelphia: 5,289
Arlington, VA: 3,812

Worth noting that these two metros cleared 90K but are shy of 100K. It seems that a new apartment tower opened in Arlington's tract, which should push it over 100K. Nothing's currently underway in Philly's two just-under-100K tracts (east of Rittenhouse Square), though since it's Philly they're surprisingly mixed-height.

Amazing that over 96% of the Americans who live in these shoulder-to-shoulder high-rise Census tracts live in or around NYC. The scale of NYC is really something else.

Originally Posted by Crawford

Northern NJ, right across the Hudson from Manhattan, has a Chicago-sized swath of higher density urbanity.

Huh, hadn't thought of it that way before but -- wow, that's impressive.

[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.

[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!

[dave8721]

Originally Posted by edale

And yet basically entirely dead at street level. It's hard to find any ground floor retail at all poking around streetview. Just blank walls and parking/vehicle access points.

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.

[Yuri]

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.

[LA21st]

It's likely undercounted anyway lol


For whatever reason the city doesn't give a shit. About recounts like NYC does