GDP per capita of the European and North American metro areas

[SHiRO]

Originally Posted by SignalHillHiker

I didn't realize London was so much larger than Paris. London certainly felt bigger, but not to the degree that it actually is.

Now, I've said that to friends on Facebook - most of whom have been to both - and they were all incredulous.

"London is a combination of places, so it can feel smaller than it is in any given place, but it is WAY bigger than Paris!"

It depends on how you look at it. These are two different cities that have a lot in common, but also have some major differences in how they function.

In the most meaningfull ways, both are actually quite similar sized. Paris' urban area is actually more populous and denser. Metro area wise London is only slightly larger, mostly because of the strict definition INSEE (French statistics bureau) applies to metro areas. It would be a fun exercise to apply US MSA standards to Paris, we might well end up with something in the 13-15 million range (this is actually something usefull people like Brisavoine could do instead of trying to downplay London all the time).

London starts to appear "bigger" only when we apply CSA like definitions. It just so happens that London is the center of a dense area that forms a web of economic activity, whereas Paris is more of an island with the nearest population/employment centers of significance all neatly forming a perimeter at roughly 100 km from Paris each. In other words, Paris has its Peterboroughs and Colchesters (in the form of Amiens, Rouen, Orléans, Reims, etc), just not the population and commuter towns in between. The important thing to remember is that this particular difference is not really noticable "on the ground" though.

And just like London and Paris are alike but different, so are London and New York and Paris and New York. Of the three I'd say New York is definately the biggest on paper, but by feel all three are in the same league (and pretty comparable).

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by SHiRO

How can you claim such an utterly moronic thing when just a couple of posts above there is a whole PDF which states that metro London in 2007 had 13-14 million people (depending on the "building blocks" you use) AS A COMPARABLE METRO AREA TO A MSA?

First, your link is not comparable to an MSA. There is no UK calculation for MSA.

Second, the relative size of an MSA has nothing to do with a relative size of a CSA. A CSA can be the same size as the MSA, or it can be three times the size of the MSA. There is no "imputed size" of a CSA based on an MSA count.

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by muppet

city-metro-3-counted-the-same-way-as-NYC-does-on-commuting-between-towns: London > NYC as that would mean most of England (near 47 million in area the size of Maine, with very dense commuting).

Now I've heard it all. London now has 47 million people...

CSA has nothing to do with "commuting between towns", BTW. Municipalities and commuting between municipalities play no role whatsoever in CSA definitions.

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by kool maudit

i don't think commuting patterns in western europe are as centralized, as the smaller towns and cities here GENERALLY function in a more self-contained degree than do those of north america. hence one can be fairly close to copenhagen or hamburg, but you aren't "copenhagen" in the same way that a similarly outlying area in southern ontario is "toronto."

the trouble is that people use commuter-shed figures to demonstrate city-size rankings, and so you get absurdities in which boston is seven times the size of amsterdam or whatever, when on the ground they are very similar in scale and in your sense of how much activity surrounds you. north americans move around more, both for cultural reasons and because many north american small towns and cities are rather degraded.

europe's big cities do not absorb their surroundings to the same degree, and this is due in part to the fact that these surroundings are often as old and as identity-possessed (helsingør has a meaning apart from copenhagen; laval has no meaning apart from montreal) as the central cities.

This.

In most cases, for a variety of historical, economic and lifestyle reasons, European cities do not have the same regional identity diffusion you see in North America. Someone in Mainz would laugh at you if you called them a Frankfurter, even if they're relatively proximate. Identity is more localized, and the built environment is consistently decent, whether in a big city or small town.

[dc_denizen]

Which city (London or NYC) is bigger based on the US urban area definition of tracks at more than 1000/square mile? this would cut out a large chunk of the 'low density sprawl' problem?

According to demographia,

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of..._by_population

NYC - 20.6 million
London - 9.8 million
Paris 11.9 million

London feels smaller than NYC, no question due not the exurban sprawl of central NJ or Suffolk and western Bergen county, but due to the sheer expanse of the central north jersey suburbs and nassau county, Long Island and southern downstate etc. Like the built environment of residential Ready or Oxford, but 1000 square miles of it. European cities, especially the UK just have more places in the 100,000-150,000 population range than the US. The fact that they fall within the MSA or CSA square mileage of a place like NYC doesn't mean they should be included in the urban area of the larger city. Nassau is psychologically and from a built environment perspective part of NYC as is north Jersey, same cant be said for Swindon or Cambridge for London.

[SHiRO]

Originally Posted by Crawford

First, your link is not comparable to an MSA. There is no UK calculation for MSA.

It's not my link, but it most definately says that it is intended to compare to MSAs. Maybe read it again?

Second, the relative size of an MSA has nothing to do with a relative size of a CSA. A CSA can be the same size as the MSA, or it can be three times the size of the MSA. There is no "imputed size" of a CSA based on an MSA count.

OK what I don't see there is how a CSA can be smaller than a MSA. Can a CSA be smaller than a MSA Crawford? Because that's what you were claiming for London...

Originally Posted by Crawford

In most cases, for a variety of historical, economic and lifestyle reasons, European cities do not have the same regional identity diffusion you see in North America. Someone in Mainz would laugh at you if you called them a Frankfurter, even if they're relatively proximate. Identity is more localized, and the built environment is consistently decent, whether in a big city or small town.

Identity is one thing that FOR SURE has nothing to do with the calculation of metro area equivalents.

And your post reads as if written by someone with absolutely no clue as well as a good amount of hypocrisy/double standards. Someone From Baltimore would not say he/she is from DC either and someone from San Francisco would not say he/she is from San Jose. Someone would say they're from the Rhein-Main area when describing a more general area instead of a specific town or city.

[SHiRO]

Originally Posted by dc_denizen

Which city (London or NYC) is bigger based on the US urban area definition of tracks at more than 1000/square mile? this would cut out a large chunk of the 'low density sprawl' problem?

According to demographia,

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of..._by_population

NYC - 20.6 million
London - 9.8 million
Paris 11.9 million

Nope, because of Green Belt. It's that simple. Nice to see we have the trifecta of trolls complete now, thanks for joining the conversation!

For a more realistic picture, please refer to post #32

London feels smaller than NYC, no question due not the exurban sprawl of central NJ or Suffolk and western Bergen county, but due to the sheer expanse of north jersey and nassau county, Long Island and southern downstate etc. Like the built environment of residential Ready or Oxford, but 1000 square miles of it. European cities, especially the UK just have more places in the 100,000-150,000 population range than the US. The fact that they fall within the MSA or CSA square mileage of a place like NYC doesn't mean they should be included in the urban area of the larger city. Nassau is psychologically and from a built environment perspective part of NYC as is north Jersey, same cant be said for Swindon or Cambridge for London.

Yep and I'm totally justified in calling you a troll. Again with the urban area when refering to Swindon (which I never even claimed to be in the CSA) and Cambridge. We're talking CSA and equivalents here, nothing to do with urban area and thus you're little tangent about using urban area to prove that NY is bigger is nothing short of city vs city trolling. We already covered why NY is bigger that way; Green Belt for London and lower density connecting sprawl for NY.

London feeling smaller than NY is nothing more than your subjective opinion. I had the pleasure of visiting New York, London and Paris within a month's time some years back and I totally disagree. All three are very much in the same league, the only category where NY feels bigger is in the skyscraper/urban canyon category, the extensive sprawl is not even something you would notice on the ground. Both London and Paris have other facets that make those cities feel larger/as large.

We're not determining which city is bigger here, because that would be NY in 3 out of 4 ways (and a year ago in 4 out of 4 ways), so stop this city vs city stuff!

[mrnyc]

shiro i hope you don't mean the 3 cities feel similar? nyc, paris and london do not feel comparable on the ground at all. ny has the towering bldgs that even the parisians and londoners annoyingly stop dead in their tracks and gape at. paris is paris and feels uniformly and humanely large and urban. london feels or fights to feel uniformly suburban, except for one small corridor of the square mile up through say the barbican where larger office bldgs are and where it gets intensely urbanized. and the docklands are more stamford, connecticut than la defense. so not the same "by feel" in those three cities at all, in fact they couldn't feel more different.


anyway, opinion's aside -- for further argument's sake here is the usual metro info at a glance:

nyc 19.9M msa or csa 23.5M (2013 estimates)
paris 12.3M (2011)
london 13.6M (2012)

[SHiRO]

Originally Posted by mrnyc

shiro i hope you don't mean the 3 cities feel similar? nyc, paris and london do not feel comparable on the ground at all. ny has the towering bldgs that even the parisians and londoners annoyingly stop dead in their tracks and gape at. paris is paris and feels uniformly and humanely large and urban. london feels or fights to feel uniformly suburban, except for one small corridor of the square mile up through say the barbican where larger office bldgs are and where it gets intensely urbanized. and the docklands are more stamford, connecticut than la defense. so not the same "by feel" in those three cities at all, in fact they couldn't feel more different.

To me these three cities do feel the same in a lot of ways. Maybe you need to visit a Bangkok, Tokyo, Jakarta or Rio to see what "couldn't be more different" really means? To say nothing of a Lagos or Mumbai.

Try making this (the link) for New York and Bangkok/Tokyo/Lagos and still have it make sense:
http://www.awwwards.com/paris-vs-new...-muratyan.html

anyway, opinion's aside -- for further argument's sake here is the usual metro info at a glance:

nyc 19.9M msa or csa 23.5M (2013 estimates)
paris 12.3M (2011)
london 13.6M (2012)

What do you mean by "the usual"? This is about as apples to oranges as you can get especially since you added a CSA figure for NY.

Again we have official figures and I seem to be the only one to use them! The rest of you seem intent on making up your own.

New York is correct per the US Census for 2013.

London's MSA equivalent per the GLA is 14.5-16 million in 2013/2014 (see the PDF on the first page and adjust for the population growth that happened since 2001 which are the numbers that they are using).

Paris is correct as per the official INSEE definition. However the INSEE definition is very strict and uses a 40% commuter threshold instead of the 25% used for US MSAs. So Paris, would you want to make a fair comparison (something very few people here are interested in it seems) should be adjusted upward a little probably. My guestimate would be 13-14 million, but be my guest crunching the numbers for real.

[muppet]

Originally Posted by Crawford

Now I've heard it all. London now has 47 million people...

CSA has nothing to do with "commuting between towns", BTW. Municipalities and commuting between municipalities play no role whatsoever in CSA definitions.

"A Core Based Statistical Area (CBSA) is a U.S. geographic area defined by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) based around an urban center of at least 10,000 people and adjacent areas that are socioeconomically tied to the urban center by commuting. "

"The United States Office of Management and Budget (OMB) defines combined statistical areas based on social and economic ties measured by commuting patterns between adjacent MSAs. "


And what a low commute that is. Of the 12 million metro population added-on to NYC's count, only 6.4% actually commute into the 5 boroughs. The other 93.6% don't commute at all, or commute into the next county or town.

We've covered this before if I remember right:

http://skyscraperpage.com/forum/show...206907&page=10

http://skyscraperpage.com/forum/show...206907&page=11


^it's all there, London, NYC and Paris compared ad nauseum. Oh and Tokyo.

[New Brisavoine]

Originally Posted by SignalHillHiker

I didn't realize London was so much larger than Paris. London certainly felt bigger, but not to the degree that it actually is.

Now, I've said that to friends on Facebook - most of whom have been to both - and they were all incredulous.

"London is a combination of places, so it can feel smaller than it is in any given place, but it is WAY bigger than Paris!"

Except... it isn't.

[Shawn]

Originally Posted by SHiRO

To me these three cities do feel the same in a lot of ways. Maybe you need to visit a Bangkok, Tokyo, Jakarta or Rio to see what "couldn't be more different" really means? To say nothing of a Lagos or Mumbai.

Shiro I am usually on the same page as you, but not on this one.

New York, on the ground in Manhattan, feels substantially bigger than anywhere in Tokyo, let alone Paris or London.

New York, on the ground in Manhattan, feels substantially bigger than anywhere in Bangkok or Jakarta as well. I have never been to Rio, Mumbai, or Lagos . . . Rio might come closest given its built environment, but if Jakarta doesn't feel as big as New York does to me, I doubt Lagos or Mumbai would either.

The only place I have ever been to that brings the same sense of vertical awe in every direction that New York induces is Shanghai.

[SHiRO]

It's all perception then. And I think you are mainly talking about tall buildings/skyscrapers because New York didn't feel more busy/bustling to me than London or Paris (it was about the same), let alone the Asian metropolises. In fact, Manhattan didn't feel very different to Barcelona to me in that regard. New York definately has that energy, but those other cities all have their own version of it. The main thing about New York that surprised me is that the avenues were not as wide as I expected them to be (adding to the canyon effect) and that it was severly walkable.
And when I was in London again some time later I kept expecting to be underwhelmed having just experienced New York for the first time, but that did not happen. Instead I kept seeing equivalents and similarities even in the things I knew from before. And during my time in New York I've never experienced a crowd like the one in Oxford Street.

New York is amazing, from day one I knew I could live there and die happy. But the same goes for London and the same goes for Paris. These three cities evoke the same feelings for me and even thinking about it rationaly I can't help but see way more similarities than differences. Despite the skyscrapers...


EDIT:- We're definately not commenting on the same thing. What I'm saying is that New York, London and Paris have a similar culture and feel as opposed to those other cities which truely fit the description "couldn't be more different". I was not commenting on which feels bigger due to the buildings, as I already wrote in an earlier post that is one facet in which New York takes the cake, no question about it.

[Shawn]

Perspective is everything of course. Crushing humanity doesn't phase me anymore. The East Asian mega cities knock every Westerner out of his socks when he first shows up, because nothing can prepare you for the pure volume of human bodies passing you per second, or the total and complete lack of the concept of personal space.

And you either adjust to that and it becomes routine, or it's just too much for you and you leave. Once it becomes routine though, it's more annoying than impressive. For me anyways, you stop sensing "energy" and just see "absurd amounts of bodies between me and where I need to get to to."

I guess what I am trying to say is that New York, on the ground in Manhattan, has a sense of grandeur, power, and magnificence that is inherent with its built form. East Asian mega cities don't have this on the same magnitude as New York outside of China. Paris and London both have exquisite senses of detail, scale, and opulence. Decadence even, if Paris' case - and I mean that in a good way. But not the same type of awe-inspiring grandiosity you get in Midtown.

But yeah, it mostly comes down to the skyscrapers.

[muppet]

^Ive never been but Ive heard from forumers that Tokyo often feels like a much smaller city due to the intimate spaces and large tracts of lowrises mixed with midrises - despite the gazillion population, and the absolutely massive buildings dotted everywhere. It often feels like a big town - and many Tokyoites dont even know they are the biggest city in the world. Izzat right?

In comparison to Seoul Ive heard, although ugly in built form, it feels immense and neverending, more than Tokyo, NYC, Hong Kong etc. (rightly so I suppose as it is the second biggest city) - despite a lack of supertalls etc. The endless march of dense highrises, straight streets, neon and canyons, traffic and crowds.

The only place where Ive seen bigger crowds than London is Hong Kong's shopping district (edit* and Istiklal Caddesi in Istanbul). Everywhere else just feels.., normal, whether it's the supposed desert of Tiananmen Square that's meant to be the world's largest square flanked by the world's largest buildings, to Shanghai/ HK that's the most highrise. I dunno, it just looks like a normal square or a skyscraper to me, nothing that wow. If you read between the lines I dont find London wow either, just normal. Im sure NYC will though, although my sister said it felt small in terms of Manhattan's scale - walking from one side to the next very quickly due to it being an island (same with HK). I suppose it's different if you drive.

Paris though feels a bit bigger in a weird way; I took my friend once, a lifelong Londoner, and he was convinced the city was GINORMOUSLY larger. The endless midrises, density, detail everywhere - and the views, from up high aswell as below down radial avenues, with grand buildings as markers. Everyone's different I suppose.

[Shawn]

^--- Totally right about Tokyo, or any big Japanese city. Always feels smaller than it actually is. The nodular layout of the metropolis adds to this effect. And if you ask your average Tokyoite where he lives, he'll say, "Oh, so-and-so Town". "Komagome-town", "Shibuya-town", "Ebisu-town." Shibuya is far from a "town", but this illustrates how natives don't think of the city as one big entity, but a massive group of interconnected neighborhoods ("towns"), each quite distinct from the next.

Plus, no population is better behaved or inclined to strictly observe rules in public than the Japanese. So big crowds here are usually more manageable, less intimidating, and physically have smaller footprints, than in other East Asian mega cities. Waiting patiently in an organized line is a point of pride / fun Sunday out for lots of people here. What are you lining up for? Who cares! It's a line and there are already lots of people patiently waiting, it must be something good. Let's get our spot now, we can figure out what we're waiting for later.

I am fairly certain there are large swatch of mainland China where "wait in line" might as well mean "fly to the moon by flapping your arms." This always makes crowds seem bigger and more energetic (or chaotic).

[10023]

ShiRo, NYC is undoubtedly more crowded than London, both in fact and in feel.

There are huge crowds on Oxford Street because London's pedestrian traffic is extremely concentrated in certain areas. Go a couple blocks north into Marylebone or south into Mayfair and it's quieter than any neighborhood in Manhattan. That's actually the nice thing about London - even in the center, when you get off the main thoroughfares you're in human-scaled, liveable neighborhoods. There are only a few areas (like Soho) where street after street is bustling with activity (and there it's kind of like the Village during the day and LES at night).

Part of it may have to do with being a tourist vs being a resident. I avoid places like Oxford street or Leicester Square at all costs. They are my hell. I also avoided walking up Fifth Ave or setting foot in Times Square when I was in NYC. (Keep in mind that with offices at Rock Center and now in Mayfair, I am very familiar with all of the above.) The difference is that NYC feels pretty crowded wherever you go, even if you're the type of person who does what they can to avoid the crush of humanity, whereas London is full of quiet spaces throughout its urban fabric.

Anyway, stop accusing others of trolling and then saying things like "I visited London, New York and Paris within a month and I disagree." Dude, I've lived in 2 of the 3, I'm in NY at least every two months and have visited Paris for work and leisure 3x this year. You are not the only one on the forum with firsthand knowledge of these places, and you have only a tourist's knowledge of New York and London but insist on arguing with a bunch of NY and London forumers.

[10023]

About commuting, CSAs, etc...

I went for a couple pints yesterday with a Dutch friend who has just moved to my neighborhood from Canary Wharf. CW is obviously way east from where most people want to live, but it's still fairly central London. He made a one off remark about his dad being in town to help him move, punching the address into the car's navigation system and going "14km... what the fuck, that's like going to the Hague!" (he's from Rotterdam).

Leaving aside the fact that it's not, actually (so no need to get pedantic about distances), this is just an anecdote but I think it illustrates the cultural difference well. His dad evidently thought commuting that far was nutty. The Brits think 2 hours is a very long drive to go away for the weekend. Americans see nothing odd about driving 90 minutes and 60 miles each way to work. It's a huge country with vast spaces. There is very little outside of the major cities (as opposed to Europe which is full of ancient market towns), and so these have a gravitational pull which extends a bit farther.

In other words - American CSAs cover vaster areas not because anyone is trying to cheat with the definition, but because the built form of the urban areas and the lifestyles of their residents are, in fact, different between North America and Europe. American CSAs are physically bigger because American cities are bigger. Partly because European countries have, on the whole, done a MUCH better job of restricting urban sprawl (plus lower historical rates of car ownership, etc).

[muppet]

sure US cities are more spread out due to sprawl. And many do long distance.

But...

the US CSA counts go WAY over taking that into account.


similar numbers commute in Europe btw (1.6 million metro New Yorkers and 1.5 million metro Londoners). And the distances are also comparable - for example back in 2001 over 20% of commuters in London's equivalent of a CSA commuted over 20km, with 80% of train users doing so, and half doing over 40km (this area's grown by 2 million now so expect those figures higher).

And although US does have long distance drivers, the CSA counts are going well beyond that: only 7% of the nearest half of NYC's outer rings - which makes the city 50% 'rural' by this stage - are long commuters into the city. In other words 93% of them don't commute to 'NYC'. And for the rings outside that expect even less.

http://www.newgeography.com/content/...-edgeless-city

[10023]

But it's not only about commuting. One also has to think about continuous built up area, leisure (as well as work) activity and yes, how people identify with the central city.

Ask a person from Elgin, IL who's traveling abroad or in a different part of the US where they're from and they'll say "Chicago area" or just "Chicago". Someone from Swindon or Cambridge or Brighton is very unlikely to mention London, other than to perhaps say that it's so far west, north or south thereof. This isn't so important in itself but it does, I think, seep into all aspects of how the regional population and economy works.