Urban Area Map Showcase

[streetscaper]

Yeah the development pattern is more like southeastern England with a dense patchwork of overgrown small towns that go on forever.

[LA21st]

Originally Posted by edale

And there are small towns and subdivisions in large swaths of rural Michigan and Ohio, too. It'd be hard to find a satellite view of a I-71 in NE or I-75 in SW Ohio (urbanized areas) that didn't also include housing. No, there isn't a Nebraska Great Plains type of environment along the I-95 corridor. Of course there isn't. But the point is that there are large development gaps. I'd call areas like the one I linked to rural. They certainly feel rural while driving through them. Not sure what you'd call them.

Looks rural to me. A few subdivisions are built in rural areas, always have been.

[Investing In Chicago]

Originally Posted by yuriandrade

Sure, I can't tell the difference between urban Boston and Atlanta, despite millions of photograph evidences, street views, knowledge of history and even tons movies set in both cities... I know Boston has plenty old buildings, lots of beautiful old urban districts, that in a not very distant past it was like 10x larger than Atlanta.

The thing is I'm talking about a complete different subject. What I'm saying is very straightforward: Boston-Worcester UA takes almost 6,000 km² of land and that's way too much. Period. Whether it has a dense, old core is immaterial.

And we can take this discussion across the Atlantic, comparing very similar countries: Netherlands, with a very strict land occupation laws, where cities must stop abruptly preserving farmland around and Belgium, where things are more lax and as result the northern half of the country has turned into an endless sprawl.

You are not making any sense - Just because Boston UA takes up alomst 6,000 sq/km (assuming that is accurate) it doesn't mean that all of that land is developed. I'd wager than 50% of that land is undeveloped forest/other protected land.
Even without having stepped foot in Boston, Stevie Wonder could see this via Google Maps.

[dc_denizen]

Massachusetts is also 62% forest, those wooded lots add up

[dc_denizen]

wait till you see Kerala, India

https://www.google.com/maps/@9.50569.../data=!3m1!1e3

[Yuri]

Originally Posted by The North One

I'm not sure why people are coming for you here, you're telling the truth. Boston is a very low density metropolitan area, as is Atlanta. That's just a fact and anybody who has driven across the metro Boston region (I have) knows this. That being said they're still very different, which I don't think you ever denied.

I'm genuinely very surprised. I didn't understand what was the fuss about it. To me it was very obvious for everybody, specially in an urbanism forum, that Boston urban area, despite its old urban core, was very well known for its huge plots and endless ultra-low sprawl.

And I'm not even attacking the region for it, they seem to build their houses with a much higher quality than the average Sunbelt suburbia, but it doesn't change the fact that's not dense at all.

Originally Posted by dc_denizen

Massachusetts is also 62% forest, those wooded lots add up

Woodlands interrupted by suburban roads don't function as an unspoiled woodlands.

Imagine if São Paulo sprawled at Boston scale (although there are some sprawl at the edges down here as well). The urbanized area would engulf half of the state.

Originally Posted by dc_denizen

wait till you see Kerala, India

https://www.google.com/maps/@9.50569.../data=!3m1!1e3

Ironically, their density is at 860 inh./km², higher than Boston-Worcester UAs.

[Investing In Chicago]

Originally Posted by yuriandrade

I'm genuinely very surprised. I didn't understand what was the fuss about it. To me it was very obvious for everybody, specially in an urbanism forum, that Boston urban area, despite its old urban core, was very well known for its huge plots and endless ultra-low sprawl.

And I'm not even attacking the region for it, they seem to build their houses with a much higher quality than the average Sunbelt suburbia, but it doesn't change the fact that's not dense at all.

What is the point you are trying to make? It seems everyone is in agreement - Boston UA has a very dense (by US standards) core, and the rest of the UA is relatively leafy. There are fairly dense (again by US standards) towns clustered throughout the region, that grew separate of Boston, but have been swallowed by Boston UA over the years. Outside of the clustered towns it is fairly sparsely populated, with large lot homes, and tons of Forest. It's not really a matter of opinion, that is objectively, what the UA of Boston is made up of.

Now, comparing the Boston UA to the Atlanta UA; Boston UA is clearly denser overall, as pointed out multiple times in this thread.

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by yuriandrade

I'm genuinely very surprised. I didn't understand what was the fuss about it. To me it was very obvious for everybody, specially in an urbanism forum, that Boston urban area, despite its old urban core, was very well known for its huge plots and endless ultra-low sprawl.

And I'm not even attacking the region for it, they seem to build their houses with a much higher quality than the average Sunbelt suburbia, but it doesn't change the fact that's not dense at all.

The logic you're using is the same that some people try to use to claim that Los Angeles is less sprawled than New York. Yes, it is true that L.A.'s average density is higher, but that's only part of the picture.

[craigs]

Most of what we now classify as dispersed nodes within Boston's modern-day metro were small to medium sized independent cities/towns that existed apart from metro Boston for centuries, but which are today captured within Boston's commuter shed. They were not purpose-built as suburbs of a larger metropolitan area; rather, they were market towns, agricultural hubs, and industrial centers with their own unique histories that were eventually swallowed up over the subsequent centuries as metropolitan Boston grew outward.

In 1900, some 1.9 million people lived in what is today's Boston MSA, or roughly 38.7% of today's MSA population. The region boomed in entire centuries when suburbia as we know it today simply did not exist. For example, a Massachusetts town I lived in, founded in 1653, was initially famous for making shoes and baseballs. It had 9,488 residents in 1900. It's compact downtown area grew modestly as the railroads connected the town with Boston, but it became a 'suburb' of Boston only in the mid 1960s, when the nearby Massachusetts Turnpike finally reached into downtown Boston. That was when developers began constructing modern day, car-oriented subdivisions: the town population grew over 72% in the 1960s alone. The old forests and wetlands that exist in and around the town today were not part of any suburban plan, but are legally protected from encroachment. These areas were never anticipated to face development pressures, being so removed from urban life for their first 200+ years.

On the other hand, in 1900 fewer than 420,000 people lived in today's Atlanta MSA--less than 7% of today's metro population. While obviously there were some small/medium sized independent towns that were similarly swallowed over time into Atlanta's sphere, almost all of that region's modern-day metro was purpose-built, in the last few decades, explicitly as car-oriented, low density suburbs of the larger metropolitan area's job centers. Unlike today's Boston metro, today's suburban Atlanta was always intended to be what it now is.

Although I love numbers as much as any forum nerd, there's more to this comparison than statistical data. That's why people keep pointing it out.

[Yuri]

Originally Posted by iheartthed

The logic you're using is the same that some people try to use to claim that Los Angeles is less sprawled than New York. Yes, it is true that L.A.'s average density is higher, but that's only part of the picture.

Indeed. I've argued since the beginning that there are two ways of see things. I'm aware that New York has like 10 million people living above a certain (high) level of density while Los Angeles has 1 million, I'm guessing here.

On the other hand, New York could better, more sustainable as whole, with less low density sprawl on its edges while Los Angeles could be even more problematic if they had big plots instead of their small ones. They would be reaching Bakersfield at this point.