Comments on: Does Density Matter?

By: BatesLine

BatesLine — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 07:04:00 +0000

Urban link dump…

Here are a bunch of links to items of note about cities: Blair Humphreys looks at urban density and finds some surprising stats: The Los Angeles urbanized area is the most densely populated in the nation. Oklahoma City and Boston have the same density,…

By: Blair

Blair — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 15:35:18 +0000

Steve – okay, now I see where you are coming from. Credit to you for attempting to take in the real city behind the city. Maybe the liveability testers got too caught up in luaus and beaches, and failed to get the whole story.

One thing to consider, I think that all great cities of the world display humanity in its extremes. In Paris you have museums and shopping, but on the outskirts are some very rough ghettos with tense racial/religious conflict. London is a city for both princes and paupers; with a number of poor neighborhoods that you are unlikely to encounter during your double decker bus tour. And NYC may have undergone a renaissance over the last few decades – cleaning up crime in huge portions of the city including Time Square – but I still wouldn’t recommend going to parts of the Bronx or to Newark.

You bring up a great question though. When it comes to liveability, for whom are we concerned? Are we worried about the quality of life of everyone? Liveability ought to include all residents of a city – not just the well-to-dos.

By: Steve Lackmeyer

Steve Lackmeyer — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 04:17:06 +0000

Blair and Dan, maybe I’m judging Honolulu too much on my visit to Wikiki. But seriously, the traffic was awful and the city has a serious problem dealing with the homeless. Beyond the postcard beaches and beautiful resorts, anyone who dared go to the real city (I couldn’t help it) would find it is seriously flawed and may face some troubled times ahead. Miami, I admit, just isn’t my kind of city so maybe I’m just being flippant on that one.

By: Dan

Dan — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 21:12:48 +0000

Interesting, thanks Blair.

Steve — I like Miami, and would live there, but I’ll grant that its desirability is not universal and certainly open to personal tastes. But Honolulu is pretty routinely considered a very desirable place to live, aside from (or despite) the high cost of living. For example, Monocle ranked it the best city to live in in the US last year (on criteria that ranked usual suspects like Copenhagen, Munich, Zurich, et al. at the top). See, e.g., http://www.monocle.com/sections/affairs/Magazine-Articles/Top-20-liveable-cities—09-Honolulu/

By: Blair

Blair — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 19:43:00 +0000

Dan – Found this and I think it answers your question about how L.A. could be considered denser than NYC. Because the study takes the density of the entire urban area – any contiguous land area with densities greater than 1,000 persons per square mile – the NYC metropolitan area ends up being incredibly large and the lower density suburbs bring down the average. While New York is monocentric, L.A is more polycentric and the average density is boosted by the number of people living in outlying nodes.

By: Blair

Blair — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 17:49:59 +0000

Good call on the New Orleans figures. The site says:

“The data was mostly collected between 2000 and 2005, however, in some cases figures from the late 1990s were used”

That is the problem with all of these list on the web, the data is not consistent. At some point in the future I will try to track down an academic study and see how it compares.

Oh, and Steve, how can we say Honolulu is not liveable? It sounds to me like a great place to live!

By: Steve Lackmeyer

Steve Lackmeyer — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 17:36:24 +0000

Dan, Dan, Dan… Honolulu and Miami – “most livable”? Come on now… really. Yes, they’re both great places to visit, but I really take issue with “most livable” for these two cities, especially Honolulu (can we even call that a city?)

By: Steve Lackmeyer

Steve Lackmeyer — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 17:32:39 +0000

I’m very surprised by the listing simply because I would have guessed OKC to be a lot further down the list than it is (and ahead of Indianapolis!). But I’m also uncertain about the freshness of these figures, seeing as New Orleans is still ranked relatively high. Blair, do you know what census this listing is pulling from? I’d suspect New Orleans post Katrina isn’t quite so dense….

By: Dan

Dan — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 16:04:30 +0000

Very interesting. For North American cities, the sweet spot really does seem to be in the 1300-1800 range. Many of the cities here that I would consider most livable are in that range — Montreal, Honolulu, Miami, Vancouver, Denver, Chicago(?!?), Salt Lake City, Portland, and San Diego.

But, their methodology is a little puzzling. How is Los Angeles denser than NYC, and NYC only slightly denser than New Orleans?