NYC with London-type boroughs and London with NYC-type boroughs

[Docere]

Too busy to do it now, but does anyone want to take a crack at this?

You don't have to get exactly 33 subdivisions for NYC, but what would it be like with boroughs more in line with the size of London boroughs?

[10023]

I think London with NYC type boroughs is easier, obviously, because you have the geographic units that can be added together. NYC with London type boroughs would require census tract data.

Doing it by population for Manhattan...

London Borough (Population):
City (7,375)
Westminster (219,600)
Islington (206,300)
Camden (220,100)
Ken & Chelsea (158,300)
Southwark (288,700)
Hackney (247,200)
Tower Hamlets (256,000)

"London Manhattan" (1,603,575)
actual Manhattan (1,601,948)

That's the City (financial district), plus all of the adjacent boroughs except for Lambeth, plus Kensington & Chelsea (which is core London by any definition). For comparison's sake, it would cover 54 square miles (vs. Manhattan's 23 square miles), so obviously much less density.

Lambeth is also adjacent, and includes important things like Waterloo station and everything along Southbank, but I can't think of a better alternative to exclude. I would kind of like to call Tower Hamlets part of "Queens" (it's the most diverse borough, with a huge South Asian population), but am trying to keep areas contiguous.

[NYguy]

This may help a little...


http://www.nyc.gov/html/dcp/html/neighbor/index.shtml

Geographically, New York is a city with 5 boroughs, 59 community districts and hundreds of neighborhoods.

In 2014, the Department of City Planning issued a revised wall map displaying the neighborhood names and community district boundaries along with informative statistics on the geographic, demographic and economic profile of New York City.

The map is available for download in high resolution (62 mb) and low resolution (7.5 mb).

Disclaimer: Neighborhood names are not officially designated. Due to space constraints, this map product does not include an exhaustive list of known neighborhood names.

LOW http://www.nyc.gov/html/dcp/pdf/neig...ighbor_low.pdf

HIGH http://www.nyc.gov/html/dcp/pdf/neig...ighbor.pdf?r=1


What's interesting about this map is that if you enlarge it enough you can see the geographical features of the city, like the ridge that runs through Staten Island, Brooklyn, and Queens, and the difference between Upper and Lower Manhattan.

[hudkina]

Greater London is nearly twice the size of New York. That means that one would probably want to include parts of New Jersey when creating a "Greater New York". As far the "City of New York", the boundaries could be Canal St turning south onto the Bowery/Park Row, turning east along the Brooklyn Bridge. The total area would be about 1.18 sq. mi. which is about the same as the City of London. The population would be about 65,000 as of the 2010 Census.

[10023]

Originally Posted by hudkina

Greater London is nearly twice the size of New York. That means that one would probably want to include parts of New Jersey when creating a "Greater New York". As far the "City of New York", the boundaries could be Canal St turning south onto the Bowery/Park Row, turning east along the Brooklyn Bridge. The total area would be about 1.18 sq. mi. which is about the same as the City of London. The population would be about 65,000 as of the 2010 Census.

I took the idea here as to compare areas with equal population, as both cities have a little over 8 million people (albeit more spread out in London, as you note).

Would that definition of the "City" of New York reach all the way down to Battery Park or not? It would really have to include all of FiDi to be comparable. But Lower Manhattan has a lot more residential population than the City of London, with TriBeCa and Battery Park City having so many residential units.

[10023]

If you want to do it the other way, you could take NYC's five boroughs plus Hudson, Essex and Union counties in NJ (the 3 densest counties adjacent to NYC). That would give you a population of 10.4 million in 579 square miles (17,900 ppsm), versus 8.6 million in 607 square miles for London (14,200 ppsm). Add Yonkers and you've got 10.6 million in 599 square miles. That's probably as close as you'll get with readily available units.

That's based on Wikipedia population figures for both, London as of January 2015 and NYC as of March 2014.

[chris08876]

^^^^

Thats the same thing I did. I attempted this a couple of months ago out of curiosity doing some ArcGis project; I added those exact counties and even Yonkers.

Its interesting to also take those figures, and then subtract the land thats considered parks to come up with some high density numbers.

I wonder what the population would be in 900 square miles as a comparison to Moscow which 11.5 million as an official figure (within 970 sq miles)?

Adding Bergen county you get 11.42 million based on 2013 figures within 846 sq miles. Thats with water included.

[10023]

Really don't see the point of subtracting parks. They're part of the fabric of the city. Are you going to subtract things like rail yards, expressways, anything that isn't residential?

[chris08876]

Just for density calculations and to see how much space is livable in a certain neighborhood.

Take Queens for example. Has a density for the borough of about 21000 per sq mile. A good portion of Queens is parkland, so I think just for sake of curiosity, eliminating the land that is parks can give somewhat of a more accurate uniformed density.

[JManc]

I had no idea Westminster was that small.

[10023]

Originally Posted by JManc

I had no idea Westminster was that small.

It's very built up but is overwhelmingly commercial, government and cultural space. Only Bayswater, Belgravia, Pimlico and the bit north of the A40 (St Johns Wood and Maida Vale) are predominantly residential. Even Marylebone has a ton of office space (including medical offices). But these are also wealthy areas so buildings are shorter and units bigger. And there's nowhere to build.

[muppet]

yep, the daytime population of Westminster is about a million (or 2 million in winter)- and not too different at night either due to the huge nightlife. However only 250,000 actually can afford/ are lucky enough to be given housing there.

Oxford Street alone sees 550,000 visitors a day



Regent Street 200,000
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and Soho-TCM-Piccadilly nightlife triangle 500,000 in a night/ doubling on weekends. This vid misses out on the 3 busiest areas but note how footfall falls dramatically once leaving the district.

• Video Link

• Video Link

[montréaliste]

The point of this thread is lost on a lot of folks I'm certain of it in a very big way. Posters should think of that the next time they walk out and have omitted to polish their boots or left some unwashed dishes in the sink. Nothing exposes me to more angry skepticism on the future of our species than a pointless thread. I hate to waste time even commenting on same but for the purpose of illustrating my frustration, I feel the need to air this. There.

[10023]

^ You can't do what the OP is asking. The two cities are too fundamentally different, starting with the fact that NYC is much more densely populated.

You would have very (geographically) small NYC boroughs if you made them comparable in population to London's, divided along arbitrary lines. One could probably carve out a mostly commercial piece of the tip of Manhattan with as many residents as London's City, but otherwise there just aren't equivalent areas, really.

[Docere]

To answer my own question, the obvious answer would be turn the former Middlesex County and the areas from Essex, Kent and Surrey counties that joined Greater London in 1965 into four "outer boroughs."

[10023]

Originally Posted by Docere

To answer my own question, the obvious answer would be turn the former Middlesex County and the areas from Essex, Kent and Surrey counties that joined Greater London in 1965 into four "outer boroughs."

But not really, because the old County of London was much bigger than Manhattan in both size and population. It was roughly the same as what's considered Inner London today, which is 3.3 million people (and at one point as many as 5 million) in 123 square miles.

[Docere]

Obviously NYC is denser etc. So it's a very rough sketch, not an exact one and not to be taken too literally.

I'd say Central London is the "Manhattan" with a bit of Brooklyn thrown in. The East End itself can be a sort of Lower East Side/Williamsburg hybrid.

NW London = Queens (most multicultural, largely interwar suburbia) with a bit of Brooklyn.

NE London = Bronx (most deprived cluster of boroughs, lots of housing projects).

South London is harder. SE London is the the whitest borough and mostly working and lower middle class and the least densely populated. It's Staten Island but with old-stock Brits instead of Italian Americans.

SW London = no clue. Mostly middle to upper middle class. Not very diverse, but more so than SE London.

[chris08876]

I like that Staten Island comparison.

[10023]

Maybe if you took just the part of Inner London north of the river, it would be a good equivalent to Manhattan. That would mean the City of London, Westminster, Kensington & Chelsea, Islington, Camden, Hackney, Tower Hamlets and Hammersmith & Fulham. The population would be 1.5 million people in 50 square miles, versus Manhattan's 1.6 million in 23 square miles. Then the urban part of the city south of the river (Southwark, Bermondsey, Lambeth, Clapham, Brixton, etc) is Brooklyn.

It actually makes some sense, because my more pretentious British friends won't go south of the river either. It's like a Manhattanite's attitude towards Brooklyn circa 1998.

[Docere]

They didn't feel that way about Tower Hamlets and Hackney?