Which cities in N.A. are urbanizing and transforming the most?

[Shawn]

Boston (the city, not the metro) has added over 100,000 residents in the past 10 years to its 48.34 sq miles of space. 12,700 pp sq mile to just under 14,700 pp sq mile. Basically all achieved through small-unit infill at scale. New Green Line stations, new Commuter Rail stations. And an entirely new district (the Seaport) which would have been heralded as amazing urbanity in some of the cities I see listed in this thread.

I see lots of shiny new towers in places like Austin and Miami and Nashville and whatnot, but not a lot of actual fine-grain urbanity. No transit upgrades of actual substance. Not a lot of upgrades in the walkability department. No new activated street walls. Just condos which 98% of the city's residents cannot afford, many on top of functionally anti-urban parking pedestals.

My guess is even given their higher "n" starting points, the cities which have further urbanized the most fly under the radar on this site in this context: Philadelphia (hugely underappreciated here given the volume of new construction vs. PA's poor economy and anti-city state government), Boston, New York, Chicago, SF. And all the usual Canadian suspects, which will as a rule outpace their American counterparts.

[Bikemike]

Originally Posted by Shawn

I see lots of shiny new towers in places like Austin and Miami and Nashville and whatnot, but not a lot of actual fine-grain urbanity. No transit upgrades of actual substance. Not a lot of upgrades in the walkability department. No new activated street walls. Just condos which 98% of the city's residents cannot afford, many on top of functionally anti-urban parking pedestals..

You are basically describing all of LAs construction boom to date. Virtually none of the added density is of any urban substance (eg fine-grained, walkable, transit oriented). This is because LA has little backbone of transit to build upon.

This will of course change with the number of more consequential transit projects in the works, but the turnaround time for these new lines opening, then being fleshed out in zoning changes (after years of guaranteed litigation by suburban-minded folk who constitute a majority of LAs population), followed by convincing developers to build Fine-grained and car-free, will take a couple of decades at minimum.

The key to genuinely urbanizing is having a usable backbone of transit. Without that all-important framework, any “urban boom” is just more vertical suburbia masquerading as urban. Seeing a bunch of skyscrapers go up in Denver, LA, or Miami is unimpressive. I’ll even go as far as saying NY and SF, while much much better, are far too auto-oriented and pale compared with cities like Frankfurt or Munich in terms of fine-grainedness. Even in NY there are too many cars driving around, and walking is very stressful. A thousand more podium-scrapers and shitty mega-block apartment buildings in LA or Atlanta won’t make these cities any less horrible to live on foot.

[Shawn]

Originally Posted by Bikemike

The key to genuinely urbanizing is having a usable backbone of transit. Without that all-important framework, any “urban boom” is just more vertical suburbia masquerading as urban.

Preach!

More towers downtown (or lots of smaller infill with some silly city-mandated 2+ parking minimum per unit) in places without transit just means more cars on already-congested roads. That's the opposite of urban.

I should have included Seattle in my list, as they smartly scrapped minimum parking requirements for new development (right, mhays?).

[edale]

Originally Posted by Bikemike

You are basically describing all of LAs construction boom to date. Virtually none of the added density is of any urban substance (eg fine-grained, walkable, transit oriented). This is because LA has little backbone of transit to build upon.

This will of course change with the number of more consequential transit projects in the works, but the turnaround time for these new lines opening, then being fleshed out in zoning changes (after years of guaranteed litigation by suburban-minded folk who constitute a majority of LAs population), followed by convincing developers to build Fine-grained and car-free, will take a couple of decades at minimum.

The key to genuinely urbanizing is having a usable backbone of transit. Without that all-important framework, any “urban boom” is just more vertical suburbia masquerading as urban. Seeing a bunch of skyscrapers go up in Denver, LA, or Miami is simple unimpressive. A thousand more podium-scrapers and shitty mega-block apartment buildings won’t make these cities from being any less horrible to live on foot.

You're a bit of an LA troll, aren't you?

A large portion of LA's urban renaissance has come from the renovation of beautiful old beaux arts buildings in the historic core. I suppose those don't count as urban substance?

I do agree that having a transit network is key for urbanization. Without that, cities are basically only able to build dense suburbia, and true urbanization doesn't really occur. New skyscrapers certainly should not be the primary metric for urbanization. Austin and Nashville are building a ton of new towers, but both are fairly pathetic in terms of urban heft outside of their downtowns. Austin transitions to unassuming ranch home suburbia remarkably quickly outside of downtown. I was shocked by this when I visited in January, and it made the booming downtown feel somewhat...fake in a way.

Given the importance of transit for urbanization, I think LA actually makes a great case for the winner of this thread. In addition to the recently opened Expo line from Downtown to Santa Monica, LA is building extending the subway under Wilshire from Koreatown to West LA, hitting many key destinations and desirable neighborhoods along the way. It also is building three new stops in Downtown LA as part of the regional connector project, giving Downtown LA alone 8 subway stations. The Crenshaw Line is due to open soon, which will connect the Expo Line to LAX, and it will be extended to join the Wilshire line soon. There's light rail even coming to the Valley connecting the Northern SF Valley with the Orange Line in Van Nuys. I don't think any other city is building rail like LA is, and the city's culture will change even more rapidly than it currently is as more and more comes online. Parking minimums are proposed to be eliminated in Downtown LA (a huge area), and citywide programs reward development near transit with parking reductions and added density.

[mhays]

Shawn -- Much of the city-of has no parking minimums, and much of the rest has small ratios, defined by urban village boundaries (where we focus growth) plus areas with reasonably-frequent (15 min?) bus service. The vast majority of new construction is in these parts of town of course.

Also, the recent legislation that allows typical house lots to have a main house plus two additional accessory units doesn't require parking. (I don't really know the rules for these)

So page 1 of the current notices for new land use permissions show (among the zillion townhouses) apartments with:
--117+0
--167+8
--31+0

(I should add that the norm isn't quite that aggressive...often the first page will have some 200+150 type projects.)

[Shawn]

^--- That's the way to do it. Boston and Cambridge and Somerville and the rest of the urban core scrapped parking minimums as well back in 2017 and we've seen big booms in secondary TOD node densification since then. Assembly Square in Somerville. The Boston Landing / New Balance Global HQ in Brighton. Quincy Center. There's been more TOD construction in Cambridge around Kendall Square than some of these listed cities' core CBDs have seen over the same time frame.

[MonkeyRonin]

Originally Posted by Shawn

Boston (the city, not the metro) has added over 100,000 residents in the past 10 years to its 48.34 sq miles of space. 12,700 pp sq mile to just under 14,700 pp sq mile. Basically all achieved through small-unit infill at scale. New Green Line stations, new Commuter Rail stations. And an entirely new district (the Seaport) which would have been heralded as amazing urbanity in some of the cities I see listed in this thread.

That's a pretty impressive rate of growth. Interestingly, Boston seems to be mirroring the population trajectory of DC: both peaked at about 800,000 people in 1950, then dropped & hovered around the mid-500,000 mark for several decades, slowly rose back up to 600,000 by 2010 and then zoomed up to 700,000 in the last decade.

Both cities seem to be chugging along under the radar, at least as far as SSP goes.

[homebucket]

Originally Posted by edale

You're a bit of an LA troll, aren't you?

A large portion of LA's urban renaissance has come from the renovation of beautiful old beaux arts buildings in the historic core. I suppose those don't count as urban substance?

I do agree that having a transit network is key for urbanization. Without that, cities are basically only able to build dense suburbia, and true urbanization doesn't really occur. New skyscrapers certainly should not be the primary metric for urbanization. Austin and Nashville are building a ton of new towers, but both are fairly pathetic in terms of urban heft outside of their downtowns. Austin transitions to unassuming ranch home suburbia remarkably quickly outside of downtown. I was shocked by this when I visited in January, and it made the booming downtown feel somewhat...fake in a way.

Given the importance of transit for urbanization, I think LA actually makes a great case for the winner of this thread. In addition to the recently opened Expo line from Downtown to Santa Monica, LA is building extending the subway under Wilshire from Koreatown to West LA, hitting many key destinations and desirable neighborhoods along the way. It also is building three new stops in Downtown LA as part of the regional connector project, giving Downtown LA alone 8 subway stations. The Crenshaw Line is due to open soon, which will connect the Expo Line to LAX, and it will be extended to join the Wilshire line soon. There's light rail even coming to the Valley connecting the Northern SF Valley with the Orange Line in Van Nuys. I don't think any other city is building rail like LA is, and the city's culture will change even more rapidly than it currently is as more and more comes online. Parking minimums are proposed to be eliminated in Downtown LA (a huge area), and citywide programs reward development near transit with parking reductions and added density.

Building more subways is a great step and I wish SF was doing more of the same. But the thing is, people in SF actually use public transit. In another thread that was posted in City Discussions, only 4.7% of workers in the LA MSA use public transportation for 2019. That is abysmal! In the city of LA, only 8.75% of workers use public transit. That's less than most suburbs in the Bay Area.

And Bikemike's point still stands. The skyscraper boom is impressive from a distance but at the street level you'll notice that most if not all of these recent towers are built on massive podiums.

LA is making good strides, but lets see public transit usage go up, and see actual towers built without podiums and ungodly parking ratios before declaring LA the winner of this thread.

[isaidso]

In Canada: Toronto, Vancouver, Montreal, Saskatoon, Halifax, Edmonton, Victoria, Calgary, KW, Ottawa, Kelowna. Generally speaking, if a Canadian metro population is growing by more than 1% annually, the metro area is urbanizing rapidly as Canadian urban planning encourages intensification, increased densities, TOD development, pedestrianization of neighbourhoods which leads to higher walk scores, PT, etc.

In the US, population growth is generally lower but its coupled with urban planning policies that are more geared to continued sprawl. There are, quite predictably, fewer cities that are rapidly urbanizing. The standouts are Seattle, Austin, Charlotte, Nashville. There are likely a few more that fall under my radar.

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by ssiguy

Toronto, Seattle, Austin, Denver, Montreal, Nashville and Charlotte.

The surprising one I think that should be added is Detroit. Detroit went thru bankruptcy which is a huge event to begin with and now is seeing a to return to more downtown living, more infill and urban agriculture of it's once dying/dead urban neighbourhoods, and a complete restructuring of it's economy away from the automobile.

Detroit is a little different. The city is definitely seeing a rebound in the urban core, but I wouldn't consider that to be urbanizing since it is happening in areas that were once even more urban than it is now. It's not like what's happening in cities that are converting from low density to high density (Austin, Charlotte, etc.), or cities that are going from high density to higher density (NYC, SF, Toronto).

[mrnyc]

Originally Posted by isaidso

In Canada: Toronto, Vancouver, Montreal, Saskatoon, Halifax, Edmonton, Victoria, Calgary, KW, Ottawa, Kelowna. Generally speaking, if a Canadian metro population is growing by more than 1% annually, the metro area is urbanizing rapidly as Canadian urban planning encourages intensification, increased densities, TOD development, pedestrianization of neighbourhoods which leads to higher walk scores, PT, etc.

In the US, population growth is generally lower but its coupled with urban planning policies that are more geared to continued sprawl. There are, quite predictably, fewer cities that are rapidly urbanizing. The standouts are Seattle, Austin, Charlotte, Nashville. There are likely a few more that fall under my radar.

except thats only if you overlook rapid ongoing urbanization in usa cities that are already established urban places, which you did not overlook in your list for canada.

and also that is not to mention the ft myers, round rock, tempe, etc., which although many like that are suburban, they are also fast growing cities unto themselves. or at least are not really sprawl like ex-urbs are.

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by JManc

A bunch of tall buildings really isn't a barometer for urbanization. Austin gets notice because its urban environment is changed with the rapid development of mid to high rise living mostly downtown and around Rainey St. Here in Houston, the transformation from low density SFH neighborhoods inside the Loop to denser concentrations of townhomes has been staggering.

Austin feels like it's urbanizing to me in the right way. At least downtown Austin is. Austin a much better pedestrian experience than Dallas, and probably even better than Miami.

[Bikemike]

Originally Posted by edale

You're a bit of an LA troll, aren't you?

A large portion of LA's urban renaissance has come from the renovation of beautiful old beaux arts buildings in the historic core. I suppose those don't count as urban substance?

You're a biased homerist aren't you? So because I make an entirely reasonable, fair, and informed criticism about LA's horrible walkability and urbanism, as long as it's about your city I must be a troll? Yes, the truth hurts but don't take it out on the truth-teller. You are the worst kind of forumer.

Originally Posted by edale

I do agree that having a transit network is key for urbanization. Without that, cities are basically only able to build dense suburbia, and true urbanization doesn't really occur. New skyscrapers certainly should not be the primary metric for urbanization. Austin and Nashville are building a ton of new towers, but both are fairly pathetic in terms of urban heft outside of their downtowns. Austin transitions to unassuming ranch home suburbia remarkably quickly outside of downtown. I was shocked by this when I visited in January, and it made the booming downtown feel somewhat...fake in a way.

Given the importance of transit for urbanization, I think LA actually makes a great case for the winner of this thread. In addition to the recently opened Expo line from Downtown to Santa Monica, LA is building extending the subway under Wilshire from Koreatown to West LA, hitting many key destinations and desirable neighborhoods along the way. It also is building three new stops in Downtown LA as part of the regional connector project, giving Downtown LA alone 8 subway stations. The Crenshaw Line is due to open soon, which will connect the Expo Line to LAX, and it will be extended to join the Wilshire line soon. There's light rail even coming to the Valley connecting the Northern SF Valley with the Orange Line in Van Nuys. I don't think any other city is building rail like LA is, and the city's culture will change even more rapidly than it currently is as more and more comes online. Parking minimums are proposed to be eliminated in Downtown LA (a huge area), and citywide programs reward development near transit with parking reductions and added density.

^And then, despite your character attack, you go ahead and agree with the substance of my opinion. funny.

Going back on point: Credit will come once it's due. LA's subway won' t open until toward the end of the decade. Zoning won't change until probably after these lines open. Meaningful changes to street-scape will take another decade, or more, to flesh out, gradually, via the private sector. Cultural shifts come last, after a large enough contingent of residents enabled to live without a car can label themselves "typical angelenos". This will take decades.

This criticism applies not only to LA, but also other sunbelt "Boom cities" like Austin, Denver, Atlanta, etc where there's likewise virtually no transit backbone, and all of the growth is from vegas-style vertical suburbia. Hundreds of podium-scrapers and mega-block apartments do not make these cities any more walkable and more pleasant to live in (in fact these developments make these cities even more stressful by bringing more cars onto streets)

What exactly about my observations do you take issue with? Especially when you consider this fact: 4.7% of Angeleno's, an ABYSMAL surrogate of LA's built environment and urban culture, uses transit. I'm focused on where LA is RIGHT NOW, and not your aspirations for a would-be LA. With such low transit-ridership, LA has a LONG way to go before it can claim to have substantive, identity-defining, urbanism.

[Omaharocks]

While Denver and Atlanta are both a long ways off from the transit environment of somewhere like Chicago or even Boston, they do have a transit backbone at this point, and there are multiple urban, walkable nodes along transit in both places. As such, a lot of their growth has been along transit lines.

[edale]

Originally Posted by Bikemike

You're a biased homerist aren't you? So because I make an entirely reasonable, fair, and informed criticism about LA's horrible walkability and urbanism, as long as it's about your city I must be a troll? You are the worst kind of forumer.

Far from it. I criticize LA all the time. There are a few LA boosters on here, and I'm definitely not one of them. But I've seen enough of your posts where you just needlessly pick at LA. Your ranting about the Cajon Ranch as evidence for LA not caring about environmental issues immediately comes to mind. Given that Cajon Ranch is much closer to Bakersfield than LA, that did a lot to discredit you in my opinion.

There is no doubt that LA is changing pretty rapidly. Unlike the other sunbelt cities, LA isn't starting from scratch when it comes to urbanism. Atlanta, Phoenix, Charlotte, etc. have nothing that even remotely compares to the Historic Core. That level of urbanism is only matched by NYC, Chicago, and SF (maybe Boston/Philly). And there is still so much more to come for Downtown LA. There are other historic urban nodes like Koreatown and Hollywood. They aren't perfect urbanism, and the commercial streets in LA are largely awful, but these places are dense, well served by transit, and have lots of foot traffic.

The LA basin has all but been built out. Land use has no choice but to intensify, as sprawl really isn't much of an option anymore. With the mix of existing historic urbanism, construction of lots of additional rail transit, and progressive planning policies that encourage TOD, LA will continue to become more and more urban. It's already made tremendous strides from just a decade or so ago.

Finally, in terms of the transit data that's been cited here a few times, I think it's interesting that the gap between the number of workers taking transit in SF and LA is only about 15,000 people. Yes, Los Angeles is a much larger city, but in terms of gross numbers, it stacks up pretty closely with DC, Philly, and SF. LA is way later to the rail transit game than all of these cities, with the first rail line opening in the 90s! Think about that in terms of how far the city has come. To build 7 new transit lines in 30 years- two of them heavy rail subway- is remarkable. Having the subway down Wilshire into the Miracle Mile, Beverly Hills, etc. is going to have a dramatic effect on the mindset of Angelenos when it comes to transit. So will having a direct rail connection to LAX.

191,018 San Francisco, CA
181,698 Philadelphia, PA
177,099 Los Angeles, CA
131,786 Washington, DC

[Bikemike]

Originally Posted by edale

Your ranting about the Cajon Ranch as evidence for LA not caring about environmental issues immediately comes to mind. Given that Cajon Ranch is much closer to Bakersfield than LA, that did a lot to discredit you in my opinion.

You're one of those forumers - the kind who decides to discredit an opponent before reading the substance of his criticism, solely because his criticism targets something you hold dear and personal.

My comment re: Tejon Ranch is a prosecution of the conservative politics of LA where it concerns transit and sprawl. The Board of Supes voted in favor of expanding LA County sprawl, to the detriment of unspoiled, endangered, wild grasslands. Bakersfield has nothing to do with this, but your insistence of Kern County's relevance to a judgement passed near unanimously by elected LA County representatives testifies to your unwillinglesss to approach this with a clear, unbiased lens, as well as to your lack of informedness. More to my point, freeway widening is on for the 5 and 605 - let me remind you that this is LA in the year 2020, not 1993, and freeway widening is still being pursued and still politically popular. I think my greater point is, the question of how well a metro is urbanizing is tied to the question of policy and political environments. LA has not made much meaningful progress in urbanization because, despite the infill boom, it remains as car-dependant as it ever was. Things may be a little different in 25 years but, fundamentally speaking, the previous 25 have change little.

Originally Posted by edale

There is no doubt that LA is changing pretty rapidly. Unlike the other sunbelt cities, LA isn't starting from scratch when it comes to urbanism. Atlanta, Phoenix, Charlotte, etc. have nothing that even remotely compares to the Historic Core.

LA has a nice historic core, but don't catch yourself being one of those boosters whose entire premise is built on a "best foot forward" argument. The fact is, I already built my argument on top of objective data about the secular habits of the average angeleno: 4.7% transit prevalence, its translation into LA's horrible walkability, and the propagation of this horrible walkability via all the billions in wasted potential being spent in the current boom with no policy-guidance on how best to manifest all this money in built form. You choose to be excited about this vegas-style density and I, having spent time in genuine urbanity, vigorously beg to differ.

Originally Posted by edale

With ... progressive planning policies that encourage TOD, LA will continue to become more and more urban.

See my above post: Credit when its actually due. Planning policy and transit planning in LA lags smaller, often less dense cities like Seattle, SF, Portland, or even SLO in many respects. Outside of social equity issues, LA is not a progressive region. The debate over parking minimums has barely taken off, and it focuses solely on limited areas around DTLA, which is itself a drop in the urbanism bucket where more transformative regional change is concerned. Measures R and M aside (which are quite important), no discussion of more secular, fundamental, and widespread policies needed to drastically change urban living throughout the city and county is taking place in LA's halls of power, and the public could generally care less to force this issue at the voting booth. Angelenos are passive - we'll have to wait for urbanism-enabling effects of a built-out transit system decades from now for people to finally start getting it.

Originally Posted by edale

Finally, in terms of the transit data that's been cited here a few times, I think it's interesting that the gap between the number of workers taking transit in SF and LA is only about 15,000 people. Yes, Los Angeles is a much larger city, but in terms of gross numbers, it stacks up pretty closely with DC, Philly, and SF.

Yes in gross numbers. That's called "a stretch". I'm focused on the real-world, obviously. In gross numbers, LA can claim the highest transit ridership-density if you focus your lens on a single city-block. That's worthless though, as you're smart enough to realize.

[JManc]

Originally Posted by iheartthed

Austin feels like it's urbanizing to me in the right way. At least downtown Austin is. Austin a much better pedestrian experience than Dallas, and probably even better than Miami.

Dallas is slightly better than Houston but I would rank San Antonio and Fort Worth higher up the food chain as they preserved more of their pre-war areas where as Austin highly developed in a confined area. You can walk from the capitol (even UT) to the lake and do a ton of things in between and it's a sizable area. Plus the lake itself lends to a lot of activity. Dallas by far has better transport where as our rail shuttles zombies around town. Especially since Covid.

[Bikemike]

Originally Posted by Omaharocks

While Denver and Atlanta are both a long ways off from the transit environment of somewhere like Chicago or even Boston, they do have a transit backbone at this point, and there are multiple urban, walkable nodes along transit in both places. As such, a lot of their growth has been along transit lines.

These cities are no better (and often worse) than LA. All vertical suburbia, with "walkable" nodes being nothing more than outdoor malls patronized overwhelmingly by suburban visitors, whithout which these "nodes" would not be economically viable. Such "faux walkability" relies on automobile infrastructure (podiums, freeways, garages, curb cuts, wide streets) as enormous crutches. You can't honestly call this "urban progress" by any stretch if the patterns that sustain it are entirely the same as before.

In other words, scarcely anyone in the inner-city lives without a car. Living in such cities can hardly be TYPIFIED as "car-free". LA, while having marginally higher transit prevalence, is hardly better. When you've lived in truly walkable cities (Berlin and Tokyo), arguing between Denver vs LA's urbanism is like arguing which American state has the best COVID response.

[edale]

Similarly, comparing SF (49 sq miles) with LA (500 sq miles, though some uninhabited mountains) is worthless. The entire city of SF would fit in to the area occupied by DTLA, Koreatown, Westlake, and Echo Park/Silverlake.

Btw, I have lived in 'genuine urbanity' on the east coast and midwest, and (pre-covid) was a transit commuter in LA, so miss me with the self-righteousness. I've never claimed LA to be some walker's paradise. Quite the contrary...our streets are way too wide, we have far too many curb cuts and auto-centric uses along our commercial corridors. But there's no doubt the city is urbanizing, and doing so at a fast rate. Every strip mall that's removed in favor of an apartment building with ground floor retail is a step in the right direction. I think I've said all I have to say on this topic.

[Bikemike]

Originally Posted by edale

Similarly, comparing SF (49 sq miles) with LA (500 sq miles, though some uninhabited mountains) is worthless. The entire city of SF would fit in to the area occupied by DTLA, Koreatown, Westlake, and Echo Park/Silverlake.

Btw, I have lived in 'genuine urbanity' on the east coast and midwest, and (pre-covid) was a transit commuter in LA, so miss me with the self-righteousness. I've never claimed LA to be some walker's paradise. Quite the contrary...our streets are way too wide, we have far too many curb cuts and auto-centric uses along our commercial corridors. But there's no doubt the city is urbanizing, and doing so at a fast rate. Every strip mall that's removed in favor of an apartment building with ground floor retail is a step in the right direction. I think I've said all I have to say on this topic.

The thing is, you keep on trying to focus your lens on LA's best 10 sq miles or 49 sq miles, but you're still being myopic about this.

Whether one pulls out and looks at ridership levels in Bay Area burbs (like San Mateo, Millbrae, Oakland, etc) or looks at the Bay Area as a whole, you see much higher transit-share than LA, the latter of whose usage of transit is far more captive (poor). Unlike with LA, SECULAR transit usage is far higher in the Bay Area, where professionals and working class alike depend a lot on transit. So your attempt to spin this another way (by focusing your lens on an extremely limited portion of LA (a "Best foot forward" strategy) won't fool rational people.

Anyways, I'm concerned about what matters: how much does transit affect prevailing life and culture (aka lifestyle). In this respect, in this most important respect, urbanism in LA has NOT changed much, however many vertical-suburbias it has erected.

Having lived in Germany and Japan, I will say that while much better, the Bay Area or Chicago are frustratingly auto-dependant as well. American cities are horribly car-dependant due to the amount of economic growth that has occurred in the post-war era.