Any American cities moving up a tier?

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by park123

Most people would agree that in the USA, the top 6 urban, pedestrian-friendly cities would be NYC, Chicago, SF, DC, Boston, and Philadelphia. With a big drop off after that. I've heard that Seattle is best poised to move into that group. I haven't been to Seattle in ages. Is it close to pulling even to or overtaking any of the weaker of those 6 cities?

I suppose NYC, Chicago and SF are unquestionably the top three. With in my opinion Boston (compact/small), DC (sparse), and Philadelphia (relatively unhealthy) at the bottom of the 6.

Any other American cities with a chance to join that group in the near future (say 15 years)?

Probably L.A. since it is the city most aggressively investing in transit right now. Maybe Charlotte will improve its status as well since it is also investing substantially in rail transit. But Charlotte is still a long way from the second tier.

Also, a sustained revival in a Cleveland or Detroit over the next two decades should put them in a tier below Chicago, Philly, SF, etc., but probably above just about every other place in the country.

[Handro]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

if we're talking about the scale of walkable urbanism, then NYC is alone in its own tier, full stop.

no other US city is currently anywhere remotely close to touching that tier.



# of zip codes over 20,000 ppsm:

NYC - 155

chicago - 17
SF - 14
LA - 14
boston - 14
philly - 11
DC - 7

seattle - 2
miami - 2




that's it.

NYC alone has 66% of all US zip codes above 20,000 ppsm.

then the "second six" (CHI, SF, LA, BOS, PHL & DC), round out the rest, with a couple each in miami and seattle.

I wonder if we could see similar numbers for housing density? That might be a better indicator of walkable urbanity than population density alone.

[MonkeyRonin]

Originally Posted by JManc

But given contemporary building codes and requirements plus modern demands, we can never reproduce the organic density of the pre-war era. We can come close.

New urbanity isn't as good as old urbanity, but it's still good. A newer city like Seattle supplemented by increased high-density development & transit is both functionally & aesthetically a lot more urban than a place like Baltimore that was once very urban but has since declined & suburbanized.

Originally Posted by thoughtcriminal

Philly "relatively unhealthy"-? WTF does that mean?

Yeah, not sure how Philly is any less healthy than Chicago. Both have large areas of blight and crime, but also have growing cores and substantial tracts of high quality intact urbanity.

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by Handro

I wonder if we could see similar numbers for housing density?

go for it.

i wouldn't know where to begin looking for housing unit density numbers by zip code.

Originally Posted by Handro

That might be a better indicator of walkable urbanity than population density alone.

perhaps, but even using the population density numbers, we still get groupings that generally align with most forumers' "on the ground" experience and knowledge of this stuff.

NYC way the fuck out ahead of everyone else, then the "second six" tier, and then seattle and miami as the up and comers.

no single objective measure could ever hope to completely define and capture "walkable urbanism", but the population density zip code numbers seem to be a decent enough proxy in this case, IMO.

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by MonkeyRonin

Yeah, not sure how Philly is any less healthy than Chicago. Both have large areas of blight and crime, but also have growing cores and substantial tracts of high quality intact urbanity.

Yeah, Philly isn't SF-Seattle level healthy (i.e. hitting on all economic/desirability cylinders) but I fail to see how Philly is objectively less healthy than Chicago. Both have very strong urban/metropolitan environments, but both have legacy issues.

[MonkeyRonin]

Originally Posted by Shawn

I don't know where to put Baltimore, which is a whole tier smaller than the Big 6, but offers walkable urbanity over large stretches just under what you can find in Boston, Philly, and DC. Pound for pound, a lot more than you'd find in all the Tier 2 candidates I listed maybe except for LA. People undersell LA's walkability; it's not continuous like you get in Tier 1 cities, but many of its islands of true urbanity are about the same size as Boston's or DC's or Philly's, just not as intense or high-grain.

The urban tier thing gets a bit tricky beyond the "Big 6" because you have essentially two paths down to tier below: there are the legacy cities that have declined and lost a lot of the urbanity that they once had - think Baltimore, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Cincinnati, etc; and then there are the new urban cities - places like LA, Seattle, Miami, or Houston, which don't have the same bones but are growing and have rapidly been urbanizing in a post-war format.

Which ones are more urban though? Tough to say - in some ways it's the legacy cities, in others it's the newcomers.

[jtown,man]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

if we're talking about the scale of walkable urbanism, then NYC is alone in its own tier, full stop.

no other US city is currently anywhere remotely close to touching that tier.



# of zip codes over 20,000 ppsm:

NYC - 155

chicago - 17
SF - 14
LA - 14
boston - 14
philly - 11
DC - 7

seattle - 2
miami - 2




that's it.

NYC alone has 66% of all US zip codes above 20,000 ppsm.

then the "second six" (CHI, SF, LA, BOS, PHL & DC), round out the rest, with a couple each in miami and seattle.

Pound for pound, Seattle is pretty damn impressive.

[park123]

Regarding Philly I just got the sense that huge areas of blight are adjascent to the center city, while in Chicago there's more of a physical separation between the good areas and bad areas. Tale of 2 cities thing in Chicago.

I also get the sense that urban Chicago's white collar economy is a lot larger and more diverse than in Philly. But these are just impressions.

[park123]

So the consensus among people who have visited Seattle recently is that it's still nowhere near the top 6? Is it at least catching up to Vancouver in walkable urbanity? Or not even that?

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by park123

Regarding Philly I just got the sense that huge areas of blight are adjascent to the center city, while in Chicago there's more of a physical separation between the good areas and bad areas. Tale of 2 cities thing in Chicago.

Whereas my quite possibly wrong image of Philly is: still fragile green shoots in the center surrounded by horrible areas all around.

I also get the sense that urban Chicago's white collar economy is a lot larger and more diverse than in Philly. But these are just impressions.

Yeah, Chicago's white collar community is much larger/deeper. But the metro is at least 50% larger, and it's the corporate center for the nation's interior, while Philly is an hour south of the (arguable) corporate center of the planet. One wouldn't expect Philly to be a corporate colossus. It's always been more of an eds/meds town. Lots of pharma and the like.

But I don't think Philly is more blighted than Chicago. And Center City isn't "surrounded by horrible areas all around". The only really bad areas close to the core are to the immediate north, and there are sketchy areas close to Chicago's core too; Chicago is just more divided by railroad tracks and industrial tracts, so neighborhoods are less interconnected. But walk from the South Loop to Cermak area and you'll see close-in blight/sketch.

Also, if a city is less desirable because sketch areas are intertwined with good areas, NYC shouldn't even be in the conversation. Most of the city is a patchwork of rich and poor living in close proximity. You frequently have housing projects across the street from condos for the 1%. Manhattan has tons of poor.

[JiminyCricket II]

Originally Posted by Shawn

You could make the argument that portions of LA will join the bottom of the Big 6 first: isn't it the only one of all the Tier 2 candidates really building out light and heavy rail?

Seattle has the bones and the culture to do it, but the transit situation isn't being addressed as seriously as LA is doing. And you'll never see Tier 1 urbanity without a real subway network.

Not sure what you consider as "being addressed" is, but I think Seattle and it's $54 billion transit package (including a 2nd downtown tunnel) passed a couple years ago would disagree, that is on top of 2 other transit packages that are currently being built out. With the exception of First Hill, all of Seattle's urban nodes will be well covered with grade separated rail. In terms of ridership when it is built out, it will be one of the highest in the nation.

Seattle will also pass LA in density this year, if it did not last year already.

[jtown,man]

Originally Posted by Crawford

Yeah, Chicago's white collar community is much larger/deeper. But the metro is at least 50% larger, and it's the corporate center for the nation's interior, while Philly is an hour south of the (arguable) corporate center of the planet. One wouldn't expect Philly to be a corporate colossus. It's always been more of an eds/meds town. Lots of pharma and the like.

But I don't think Philly is more blighted than Chicago. And Center City isn't "surrounded by horrible areas all around". The only really bad areas close to the core are to the immediate north, and there are sketchy areas close to Chicago's core too; Chicago is just more divided by railroad tracks and industrial tracts, so neighborhoods are less interconnected. But walk from the South Loop to Cermak area and you'll see close-in blight/sketch.

Also, if a city is less desirable because sketch areas are intertwined with good areas, NYC shouldn't even be in the conversation. Most of the city is a patchwork of rich and poor living in close proximity. You frequently have housing projects across the street from condos for the 1%. Manhattan has tons of poor.

Yes, Cermak is horrible.

https://www.google.com/maps/@41.8527...7i16384!8i8192

https://www.google.com/maps/@41.8527...7i16384!8i8192

I get it. You said Cermak area, not the actual street. I think a better example would be to just say "south of 55" because the Cermak area isn't bad at all. I live between the south loop and Cermak, granted closer to the south loop, but I wouldn't catagorize the area as blighted in any sense.

[dubu]

portland is big on pedestrian bridges and its had light rail for 34 years, its getting worse because the suburbs are growing though. i dont think there are any other cities that if you got rid of the outer suburbs it would be a lot less of a car oriented city

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by jtown,man

I get it. You said Cermak area, not the actual street. I think a better example would be to just say "south of 55" because the Cermak area isn't bad at all. I live between the south loop and Cermak, granted closer to the south loop, but I wouldn't catagorize the area as blighted in any sense.

In any case, you can find poor folks or less desirable close to downtown Chicago. There are a few sketch blocks between South Loop and Chinatown, whatever you want to call the area. If you walked to United Center from downtown, you'd encounter sketch blocks. To the north, there are still the Cabrini Green remnants, and assorted Section 8/public housing etc.

NYC has rich-poor living side-by-side and Detroit doesn't, that doesn't make Detroit a more healthy urban environment. I'd probably argue it's healthier to mix the sketch with the healthy than to keep it isolated.

[IrishIllini]

You start to see blight south of Cermak, but heading south in Chicago isn’t quite the same as headed north in Philly. There’s a bottleneck heading south of the Loop. There’s a much stronger connection between Center City and North Philly.

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by IrishIllini

You start to see blight south of Cermak, but heading south in Chicago isn’t quite the same as headed north in Philly. There’s a bottleneck heading south of the Loop. There’s a much stronger connection between Center City and North Philly.

I agree, I just don't see how this is a bad thing from an urbanist perspective.

[Handro]

Originally Posted by Crawford

In any case, you can find poor folks or less desirable close to downtown Chicago. There are a few sketch blocks between South Loop and Chinatown, whatever you want to call the area. If you walked to United Center from downtown, you'd encounter sketch blocks. To the north, there are still the Cabrini Green remnants, and assorted Section 8/public housing etc.

NYC has rich-poor living side-by-side and Detroit doesn't, that doesn't make Detroit a more healthy urban environment. I'd probably argue it's healthier to mix the sketch with the healthy than to keep it isolated.

I think that's 100% correct and is borne out in lots of studies on the topic of segregation. Unfortunately Chicago has been trending in the wrong way for the past couple of decades. Cabrini is pretty much gone and the area is quickly being developed.

The walk from the UC to downtown is 100% different than it was 20 years ago and you'd be hard pressed to find a sketchy area walking between the two unless you took a pretty weird route (the areas to the north and west of the UC still have pockets of poverty but I think most people paying close attention to the patterns in Chicago would say this probably won't be the case in 10 years).

There was a study done that got a bit of publicity in Chicago about the cost of segregation in the city: https://www.urban.org/policy-centers...st-segregation

NYC does a good job of mixing low and high income housing and the city feels all the more safe and vibrant because of it. It's a shame that Chicago still has so many people stuck in the misguided middle 20th century way of of thinking about cities.

[IrishIllini]

Originally Posted by Crawford

I agree, I just don't see how this is a bad thing from an urbanist perspective.

I don’t see either situation necessarily better or worse than the other. They’re both urban environments. That bottleneck has existed in Chicago for well over a century, predating the blight that exists today.

I’d like to see the Stevenson spur to LSD demoed and replaced with a boulevard. That’d do a lot to break down the physical/psychological barriers separating the near south side from Bronzeville/Chinatown.

[jtown,man]

Originally Posted by Crawford

There are a few sketch blocks between South Loop and Chinatown, whatever you want to call the area.

Where would those blocks be exactly? I've walked to Chinatown probably 7 times in the last three weeks(for research) and I walk west of Michigan, which is probably "worse" than east of it and I've never felt the area looked dilapidated or scary. And this is from someone who is hyper-focused on safety issues.

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by jtown,man

Where would those blocks be exactly? I've walked to Chinatown probably 7 times in the last three weeks(for research) and I walk west of Michigan, which is probably "worse" than east of it and I've never felt the area looked dilapidated or scary. And this is from someone who is hyper-focused on safety issues.

I don't think there are any "scary" areas, but there are less desirable blocks. The South Loop is also a very quiet area (for urban core standards), with a lot of dead-ends.

Areas like this do not scream desirable. I see projects, empty land, gates, no people. I would not want my wife walking around here after dark:

https://www.google.com/maps/@41.8529...7i16384!8i8192

Of course, there's some subjectivity involved. The Hub in the South Bronx is one of the poorest census tracts in urban America, and high crime for NYC standards. But it's packed-in and vibrant. Is it "scarier" to have dead space or lots of activity?

https://www.google.com/maps/@40.8163...7i13312!8i6656

Personally, I feel more comfortable in any area with activity, whether "bad" or "good". I actually feel that some of the parkside blocks in super low-crime Park Slope feel more "sketch" late at night than the South Bronx, again, because there's no one there. I've gotten nervous very late at night hearing someone running out of the park towards me, when it was just a jogger.