If We Want Everything To Be A 15-Minute Walk From Home, State Needs To Get Involved

[jmecklenborg]

Originally Posted by yuriandrade

Boston area is growing at the faster pace since the 1960's. I imagine they need to add lots of housing otherwise they might become another San Francisco.

It's also one of the least dense urban areas in the US, not much better than Atlanta, so I guess some densification outside the city proper would be welcomed.

Do Cambridge, Sommerville, etc., have some dumb height limit stuff going on? I lived in Cambridge 20 years ago and the only hi-rises were around Kendall/MIT, and they weren't residential. I remember there being a few public housing towers out by the Alewife T station.

I just don't think it's worth battling suburbs to legalize ADU's or basement apartments and maybe get a strip of townhomes built near a commuter rail station. The much more pragmatic approach is midrise/hi-rise development near existing T subway stations.

[10023]

Originally Posted by Manitopiaaa

The irony is that while the Federal Government is constitutionally restricted from interfering in State actions (that whole 'federalism' thing), the States themselves operate on a unitary basis within their lands.

That’s not ironic, that’s by design. States are sovereign in the US.

[Double L]

Hate to say it but this would be a good argument against zoning. Give the developers more freedom to build denser.

[JManc]

Originally Posted by yuriandrade

Looking at Google Maps, there are like 40 miles of very low exurban development between the denser suburbs of Boston and Worcester. Same between Boston and southern New Hampshire and Boston and Providence. It's not like those New England big plots are endangered species. They'll be there forever.

So it's not harmful to allow denser developments if the owners want so, specially now when Boston metro area is growing near double-digit/decade.

Having lived in southern New Hampshire for a while, it's pretty sparse and the attraction there are the rural open spaces and I don't see the demand for denser developments outside maybe Nashua or Manchester. I could see it around Lowell, Worcester and Providence which are already fairly dense areas within an hour of Boston.

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by yuriandrade

I'm not criticizing them. I'm just stating they have lots of room to densify. Not suggesting exurban Boston must turn itself into a Hong Kong, but some denser nodes might help the area.

The urban areas in and around Boston could easily be denser than they are now. I don't think they need to develop the green space around the developed areas in order to grow.

ETA: Also, the average density of Boston Metro disguises that it is actually one of the most densely built metro areas in the U.S. From the census thread:

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
23.2% Santa Barbara: 104,916
22.7% Miami: 1,398,475
19.5% Las Vegas: 441,510
19.2% Washington: 1,230,663
18.0% Oxnard: 152,811
18.0% Trenton: 70,272
17.9% Providence: 301,925
17.7% State College: 28,622
17.5% Bridgeport: 168,397
15.9% Santa Cruz: 43,412
14.3% Milwaukee: 226,941
14.2% Reading: 61,836
13.1% Baltimore: 375,152
13.1% Buffalo: 153,098
12.5% Seattle: 505,840
11.1% New Haven: 96,281
10.6% Denver: 315,809

[The North One]

Originally Posted by yuriandrade

I meant SF area crazy housing prices.

Boston has already been there for a along time.

[The North One]

Originally Posted by iheartthed

The urban areas in and around Boston could easily be denser than they are now. I don't think they need to develop the green space around the developed areas in order to grow.

ETA: Also, the average density of Boston Metro disguises that it is actually one of the most densely built metro areas in the U.S. From the census thread:

How is average metro density calculated? Because those cities are all over the place. Boston has one of the lowest density metropolitan areas in the country, it's not far from Atlanta.

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by The North One

How is average metro density calculated? Because those cities are all over the place. Boston has one of the lowest density metropolitan areas in the country, it's not far from Atlanta.

Population divided by land area. Boston isn't a low density metro. It just has a very liberally defined area. It is nearly the polar opposite of Atlanta.

[Yuri]

Originally Posted by jmecklenborg

Do Cambridge, Sommerville, etc., have some dumb height limit stuff going on? I lived in Cambridge 20 years ago and the only hi-rises were around Kendall/MIT, and they weren't residential. I remember there being a few public housing towers out by the Alewife T station.

I just don't think it's worth battling suburbs to legalize ADU's or basement apartments and maybe get a strip of townhomes built near a commuter rail station. The much more pragmatic approach is midrise/hi-rise development near existing T subway stations.

I don't know, but if they have, they should scrap it. It's an urban environment for the past 200 years, so midrises and even highrises should be allowed.

Originally Posted by JManc

Having lived in southern New Hampshire for a while, it's pretty sparse and the attraction there are the rural open spaces and I don't see the demand for denser developments outside maybe Nashua or Manchester. I could see it around Lowell, Worcester and Providence which are already fairly dense areas within an hour of Boston.

Originally Posted by iheartthed

The urban areas in and around Boston could easily be denser than they are now. I don't think they need to develop the green space around the developed areas in order to grow.

Yeah, wherever they want to add more density. Around denser nodes it's even more helpful as more people could use existing transit. But they definitely should get denser or at least not having density to be outlawed.

[Steely Dan]

probably not a bad idea to drop these MSA WPD's that chisoxrox calculated over in the CB thread.

Originally Posted by ChiSoxRox

Weighted population density for MSAs over 1 million:

1. New York: 33,787.5
2. San Francisco....13,267.8
3. Honolulu....12,581.9
4. Los Angeles....12,169.4
5. San Jose....9,075.9
6. Chicago....9,011.9
   
7. Boston....8,987.9
8. Miami....8,489.2
9. Philadelphia....8,258.5
10. San Diego....7,381.9
11. Washington....7,296.1
12. Las Vegas....7,031.7
13. Seattle....6,146.3
14. Denver....5,418.0
15. Providence....5,204.6
16. Baltimore....5,144.7
17. Salt Lake City....5,070.9
18. Portland....5,058.8
19. Milwaukee....5,023.7
20. Sacramento....5,002.7
21. Phoenix....4,807.7
22. Riverside....4,636.9
23. Houston....4,606.4
24. New Orleans....4,577.0
25. Fresno....4,518.4
26. Buffalo....4,348.8
27. Dallas....4,274.7
28. Detroit....3,906.9
29. Minneapolis....3,784.4
30. Cleveland....3,676.9
31. Tampa Bay....3,616.6
32. Columbus....3,605.8
33. Virginia Beach....3,580.8
34. Austin....3,565.3
35. San Antonio....3,424.0
36. Tucson....3,285.2
37. Orlando....3,275.7
38. Hartford....3,195.3
39. Pittsburgh....2,970.0
40. Rochester....2,948.2
41. St. Louis....2,738.0
    
42. Atlanta....2,686.4
43. Louisville....2,686.3
44. Cincinnati....2,658.2
45. Oklahoma City....2,647.3
46. Richmond....2,590.4
47. Kansas City....2,561.4
48. Indianapolis....2,457.3
49. Jacksonville....2,431.3
50. Grand Rapids....2,413.3
51. Memphis....2,339.4
52. Tulsa....2,167.3
53. Raleigh....2,166.8
54. Charlotte....1,996.1
55. Nashville....1,943.3
56. Birmingham....1,402.6

in terms of where most people actually live, metro boston is substantially denser than metro atlanta.

[Yuri]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

probably not a bad idea to drop these MSA WPD's that chisoxrox calculated over in the CB thread.





in terms of where people actually live, metro boston is substantially denser than metro atlanta.

I guess weighted density is more helpful to understand better an urban area dynamics, specially regarding transit (which is incredibly low everywhere in the US but New York), but the good old simple density is also important to look at.

Atlanta suburbs get lots of flak due its gargantuan sized plots, while Boston and New York get a free pass. Very low-density environment is still an issue regardless how many people you have living in high densities in the core.

Let's due the opposite exercise we know how many people are living above 10,000 inh./sq mi areas. What about how many people living in 1,000-2,000 inh./sq mi environments? I guess there is a very high number in the Northeast Corridor.

[The North One]

Originally Posted by iheartthed

Land area divided by population. Boston isn't a low density metro. It just has a very liberally defined area. It is nearly the polar opposite of Atlanta.

How is it liberally defined? Looks reasonable to me.

You guys have clearly never been to Boston or at least never stepped foot outside of Boston city limits/Cambridge. As soon as you leave the central parts density falls off a cliff. Nothing but detached homes on windy almost rural like streets, tons of woodland areas in between them.

Outside the core, it is very low density, there is no way around it.

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by yuriandrade

I guess weighted density is more helpful to understand better an urban area dynamics, specially regarding transit (which is incredibly low everywhere in the US but New York), but the good old simple density is also important to look at.

Atlanta suburbs get lots of flak due its gargantuan sized plots, while Boston and New York get a free pass. Very low-density environment is still an issue regardless how many people you have living in high densities in the core.

Let's due the opposite exercise we know how many people are living above 10,000 inh./sq mi areas. What about how many people living in 1,000-2,000 inh./sq mi environments? I guess there is a very high number in the Northeast Corridor.

I don't think Boston actually builds suburbs anymore. It is extremely hard to build new single family housing developments in the northeast precisely because the powers that be wanted to control sprawl. It has been like this for longer than I've been alive.

I've visited both Atlanta and Boston dozens of times. These places are almost as different as it gets in terms of density in the United States. The top level numbers are extremely misleading. The devil is buried in the details. Boston looks way more like San Francisco than it does Atlanta. Atlanta looks way more like Dallas than it does Boston.

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by The North One

You guys have clearly never been to Boston or at least never stepped foot outside of Boston city limits/Cambridge. As soon as you leave the central parts density falls off a cliff. Nothing but detached homes on windy almost rural like streets, tons of woodland areas in between them.

That's the whole point. It's why Boston has high weighted density, but low overall density, therefore very different than Atlanta.

An extreme example is Hong Kong. HK has very high weighted density, but fairly low overall density, because most of HK is sparsely populated. As soon as you leave the city center around HK Island/Kowloon it's mostly sparse, with woodlands, detached homes, fishing villages, and rural-like streets. But no one would claim HK is low density, bc the vast majority of people live in extreme density. It's probably the highest density non-poor city on earth.

[mhays]

Much of Hong Kong is literal wilderness.

[Yuri]

Originally Posted by iheartthed

I don't think Boston actually builds suburbs anymore. It is extremely hard to build new single family housing developments in the northeast precisely because the powers that be wanted to control sprawl. It has been like this for longer than I've been alive.

I've visited both Atlanta and Boston dozens of times. These places are almost as different as it gets in terms of density in the United States. The top level numbers are extremely misleading. The devil is buried in the details. Boston looks way more like San Francisco than it does Atlanta. Atlanta looks way more like Dallas than it does Boston.

I understand. On the other hand, I imagine it’s not easy either to densify those suburbs.

In any case, even if there weren’t anti-sprawl controls it’s hard to imagine where they could sprawl more. Their ultra low density ribbons are already clashing with New York’s. Or even Atlanta: they’re not even sprawling that much as it became impractical to leave so far away from Downtown/Midtown/Buckhead.

[JManc]

Originally Posted by The North One

How is it liberally defined? Looks reasonable to me.

You guys have clearly never been to Boston or at least never stepped foot outside of Boston city limits/Cambridge. As soon as you leave the central parts density falls off a cliff. Nothing but detached homes on windy almost rural like streets, tons of woodland areas in between them.

Outside the core, it is very low density, there is no way around it.

I certainly have as I lived in the metro area and much of the region outside the inner ring suburbs are quaint typical New England towns that are nearly as old as Boston itself that were eventually absorbed into the Boston metro area. This is nothing like Atlanta where pretty much everything surrounding it owes their existence to Atlanta sprawling outward after WW2. Unlike much of the Sunbelt, it's rare for huge tracks of undeveloped land to be bought up and subdivided into massive masterplanned communities.

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by JManc

I certainly have as I lived in the metro area and much of the region outside the inner ring suburbs are quaint typical New England towns that are nearly as old as Boston itself that were eventually absorbed into the Boston metro area.

Some of them might even be older than Boston.

[Yuri]

I randomly looked at Boston area in Google Maps. There is this town called Bedford, on Middlesex County, 15 miles northwest of Boston (relatively close). I checked on Wikipedia and apparently is very old settlement, from the 17th century.

It's old villages, like Boston, not new as Atlanta sprawl. However, between Bedford and this inner suburb or Arlington, which almost borders Boston city proper, we have ultra-low density sprawl regardless the age of those villages and the farms that were turned into suburbs.

The old age of those villages in eastern Massachusetts doesn't change the fact the region has very few people taking a massive amount of land to live in. Some areas are just insanely low: that area east of Lawrence and north of Salem, most of Essex County, really. Or between Lowell and Marlborough.

Originally Posted by Crawford

That's the whole point. It's why Boston has high weighted density, but low overall density, therefore very different than Atlanta.

An extreme example is Hong Kong. HK has very high weighted density, but fairly low overall density, because most of HK is sparsely populated. As soon as you leave the city center around HK Island/Kowloon it's mostly sparse, with woodlands, detached homes, fishing villages, and rural-like streets. But no one would claim HK is low density, bc the vast majority of people live in extreme density. It's probably the highest density non-poor city on earth.

The difference is 90% of Hong Kong are mountains or forests where no one lives.

In Boston area, we have a good couple of million people living in densities below 1,000 inh/sq mi. It's not the same thing at all.

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by yuriandrade

The difference is 90% of Hong Kong are mountains or forests where no one lives.

In Boston area, we have a good couple of million people living in densities below 1,000 inh/sq mi. It's not the same thing at all.

That's not true, though. Most of HK is lightly populated, not empty. Fishing villages, homes in the hills for the wealthy, isolated New Towns, etc. Of course the vast majority of people live in superdense apartment neighborhoods, but most of the land is sparse.

Obviously HK doesn't have SFH for average people, that wouldn't make sense. Boston is one of the richest metros on earth; HK is relatively poor for a first world city. And HK is extremely land constrained, so the land is worth too much for SFH with land.

There are some parks, which are obviously uninhabited, but, like Boston, HK is a metro with low overall density but high weighted density. HK is just an an extreme example.

This is common HK living outside of the core. Looks like suburban Mexico:
https://www.google.com/maps/@22.2358...7i13312!8i6656