Any American cities moving up a tier?
 

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)?

I don't think that Seattle is quite there yet. It is nowhere near as dense as the other six cities in your list.

In the last decade Detroit moved into its own tier; the very bottom.

LA and Dallas come to mind. I think both cities have been undertaking some pretty big transit projects. I don’t know about being dense per se, but maybe moving on from being completely auto-centric.

Not exactly pedestrian friendly but DFW and Houston are growing fast and denser. Dallas a little further along.

Parts of Minneapolis are significantly more urban than they were 20 years ago. I wouldn't say that it has gone up a level but it is in the process of it. That is probably true for most of the growing metros in the two to four million range that had moderately urban cores. If you add a couple hundred midrises to the gaps in the existing fabric in a city that size it goes a long way.

Seattle and LA are closest.

Next rung would be; Denver, Minneapolis and Portland.

Third rung: San Diego, Dallas, Atlanta, Miami, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Nashville, Baltimore, Cincinnati.

Btw looking at cities with metros > 2 million.

Can't speak for Minneapolis or Portland but I was in Denver last month and there's no way it's more dense than Dallas or Houston, let alone Austin.

North One will have words with you in 1...2...3...

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

I'd say the Tier 2 candidates are LA, Seattle, Dallas, Houston, and Miami.

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.

Houston and Dallas won't be joining that Tier 1 list anytime soon, regardless of how much denser they get. I guess Dallas is set up for a closer approach (DART, which has to be the coolest transit authority name in the country), but Houston as a city seems more culturally inclined to try, even without any real transit upgrades. Either way though, there's only so much a city can hope to achieve in a Red State.

Miami, I just don't see it happening either. Too many tower-in-the-parks on top of parking podiums with minimal street activation. South Beach though, South Beach.

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.

Idk about Dallas...Even LA is spotty.

You seem be ranking urbanity and nothing else. In that case, no, there will probably be no changes in our lifetime.

60 years ago, the most urban cities were NYC, Boston, Philly, DC, Chicago and SF. Nothing has changed, which makes sense, because relative urbanity is basically relative share of intact pre-auto form and corresponding pre-auto functionality.

In 60 years, do you think another European city will become equally as historic as Venice or Florence or Bruges? Doesn't make sense.

Implicit in your post is the supposition that Americans can't build pedestrian-friendly urbanity from scratch anymore. That is probably a fair supposition. But it does seem like Americans can densify existing cities. Is that not possible in Seattle for example? Vancouver seems to be a successful example of that. Is Vancouver far off the bottom of America's top 6?

La for sure.
People don't realize the impact the purple line will have. And that's just one thing.

Seattle is after that.

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.

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.

Doesn't northern NJ have quite a few? Or are they already included in your NYC number?

the list is by metro area, so yeah, jersey's zip codes are in that NYC number.

my apologies for not clarifying.

Yeah the central areas of Vancouver aren't the North End of Boston, but they're not too bad. I presume that sort of thing can happen for example in Seattle (and has been happening).

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.

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

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.




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.

go for it.

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





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.

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.

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.

Pound for pound, Seattle is pretty damn impressive.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

I'm sorry to say that this assessment hasn't been accurate for many years now. Center City is wealthy and the adjacent neighborhoods are fully gentrified and quite expensive in their own right. Certainly, one would have to walk for a long time outside Center City before stumbling upon shady neighborhoods.

As for tiers, I would place NYC alone in Tier 1. As it is the case for many of our debates, NYC is its own animal, head and shoulders above any other American city when it comes to urbanity/walkability, transit usage, etc.

Tier 2 would be Philly, Boston, DC, SF, and Chicago; but the differences in terms urbanity/walkability are trivial. I would also add one other place to the Tier 2 list of cities: Hudson County, NJ. Its high-density areas are as big and dense as Philly, Boston, et. al. If the county consolidated into its own city, I don't think its status would be debatable.

After that, there is definitely a drop off. Mostly in terms of size. Places like Cleveland, Denver, Pittsburgh, Seattle, Baltimore, etc. have dense, urban areas but it's just confined to a smaller area relative to the Tier 2 cities.

It depends on what you mean, Most moderate and above metros have at least one or a few urban-ish areas that are walkable but they are typically surrounded by sprawl and cater more to people who want the novelty of an urban area.

Most of the top 20 cities have some level of a walk able and urban downtown especially over the last 15 years they have universally improved and become more populated.

In terms of which city will soon be considered "urban" and walk able to the level of Chicago and DC?

Probably Seattle, Denver maybe but it still has a way to go much of the downtown is still very 9-5. Portland, but Portland is still pretty small when it comes to major population centers.

Most of the cities that are becoming urban and walkable are still primarily suburban. I dont think you'll change that even if urban neighborhoods continue to grow and be popular.

I see what you are saying. lol I knew you would refer to those buildings though, which honestly I walk right by and never felt any type of way. The grounds surrounding it actually look kind of nice.

those are the hillard homes, designed by betrand goldberg. they are some of the few remaining public housing highrises left in chicago, mostly because of their architectural pedigree.

about 20 years ago the CHA dumped a bunch of money into them to redevelop them as mixed-income apartments, which has met with much greater success than the CHA's old strategy of using highrise public housing as vertical warehouses exclusively for the poorest of the urban poor (see the now-demolished cabrini-green, ABLA, henry horner, robert taylor, stateway gardens, etc. projects).

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...iard_Homes.jpg
source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/F...iard_Homes.jpg

Yeah, it's funny really, I've always seen those buildings in pics and street view and thought to myself...man those look scary. I was hesitant about walking to Chinatown with my gf instead of taking the train the first time she brought it up, almost solely based on these buildings. However, to my surprise, my girlfriend actually commented (without me prompting her) about how she really likes the "weird" look of the buildings. And in subsequent trips down south, I've come to respect the look and realized the area surrounding them(at least on the north and west sides-the only sides I've walked past) are completely fine safety-wise. I could be totally wrong, but perception is what it is I suppose.

Just for clarification. . . none of those areas you're describing will look like that in the near future - if they even look "sketch" today. . . much of what was skid row in Chicago only 20 years ago is the booming-est office/residential market anywhere in the Midwest. . . there's nothing in the South Loop (everything north of I55) that is "sketch" - Steely already went into that. . . everything within a block of those buildings is desirable residential and retail. . . as for Cabrini Green and whatever slums that were adjacent - that's all gone and is being replaced by luxury housing. . .

. . .

Maybe, but LA is so much larger than Seattle. What is LA's density around downtown for the size of Seattle? I don't think Seattle wins that at all. This is not just for Seattle,but other large cities like DC too.

oops, I think I replied to the wrong post.

Any mention of Denver in this discussion ahead of L.A., Dallas, Houston and several other "legacy" (yet diminishing) urban cities and emerging urban cities is laughable.

Yes, Denver is growing, and beginning to show signs of development in its core. But in its present state, it still "feels" like a medium sized city stuck in the 80's relative to the others IMO.

LA and Dallas are largely in the same boat as Denver, their urban cores are relatively small and act more like a novelty to the overall city.

Sure LA's downtown is bigger but its not a "walkable city" like NY or Chicago or DC

Seattle is closest, Denver is getting there I dont think any other city developed in the post car era will ever move that way, including in Dallas and LA

The downtown's may grow but I don't see either being defined by their urban cores like what the original question was asking.

I prefer Denver and San Diego downtowns to Dallas and Houston. They are not bigger or denser, but they have better urban bones and walkability. If Midtown Houston can one day resemble the Gaslamp Quarter in SD, it will have come a long way.