Quote:
Originally Posted by RumbleFish
Thank you for the cool photos, but have you been to Vancouver or Toronto? Downtown Boston does not feel or look bigger in person (or photos) compared to Vancouver and with Toronto it is not even close. Both metros also have highrise condos thoughout and dense neigborhoods. Boston looked small to me in person and the aerial photos do not sell me either, but maybe that is just moi.
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Your whole methodology is faulty. Let's remember that the actual statistical facts say that you're wrong. So what about how big downtown Boston by itself feels? Most of the residents live outside the immediate downtown, which is still office-centric although now building more residential buildings.
Scattered highrise condos alone don't make a metro dense. Do you really think those few apartment/condo towers sprouting up in the Vancouver suburbs add an additional 2 million people? Look at a city like Paris. You could make La Defense disappear and Paris would still have well over 10 million people, with hardly any skyline to speak of.
I went to Toronto many years ago and wasn't impressed at the time. Outside the downtown felt like a suburban hellscape that just happened to have tall buildings thrown in. Mississauga in particular is by far my least favorite (populated) area I have ever been in my life. Sterile, huge parking lots, too much space between buildings, and straight roads with hundreds of houses that looked exactly the same. I weep for humanity at the thought of Mississauga.
Boston should be compared more with Montreal (and in the US Philadelphia, maybe San Francisco). Most of the housing stock is lowrise and was there before highrise apartments became in vogue. Look at the first picture I posted. Do you not notice the insanely dense 4-6 story brick neighborhoods surrounding all of the skyscrapers? It might be easier to see in the original size. Those are where the 100,000/mile tracts are. I also think you are a little bit confused with the scale of the city itself. For instance, Boston has over 20 150 meter buildings compared to 6 in downtown Vancouver. You don't seem to realize that the picture of Vancouver appears to be taken from a much closer distance than that of Boston below it.
Then most of the lowrise houses surrounding Boston are multi family, in particular triple deckers. So instead of single family housing with bigger yards, there is just triple decker after triple decker, practically rubbing up against one another. These old-city lowrise neighborhoods are built much denser than we see today, and are where most of the population density comes from in the Boston area.
I leave you with a couple shots showing some of the lowrise density better (North End rowhouses, then Somerville triple deckers). Also, just remember, statistics say you're flat out wrong. But go ahead and keep arguing from your losing position if that's your thing.
C1009934 by
Sean Sweeney, on Flickr
Sunset After the Storm by
MitchcCaldwell, on Flickr
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