From Newgeography:
LOS ANGELES DENSEST URBAN AREA: REVISION OF CENSUS BUREAU DATA
by Wendell Cox
02/20/2023
Los Angeles has been restored to the position of densest major urban area (over 1,000,000 population) in the nation, according to Census Bureau data. The original announcement of urban area population and densities has been revised for the San Francisco-Oakland urban area (San Francisco urban area), which had been listed as the densest major urban area, passing the Los Angeles urban area. Los Angeles had been the nation’s densest urban area in the 1990, 2000 and 2010 censuses and has now been recognized as densest in the 2020 Census.
The previous newgeography.com article summarizing the new data has been revised, with a new table listing the 83 urban areas with more than 500,000 population shown in both this article and the previous.
The Revision
The revision places San Rafael-Novato in the San Francisco-Oakland urban area, as it had been in 2000 and 2010. The San Francisco-Oakland urban area had a revised population of 3,516,000, in a land area of 514 square miles, for a density of 6,843 per square mile (2,632 per square kilometer), an increase of 9.2% from the 6,266 reported for 2010, disregarding the changed urban area qualification criteria (Note 2). San Francisco’s 14th ranking in population is unchanged, and even with the additional population has been passed by the Seattle urban area, with 3,544,000 residents. Since 2010, the Seattle urban area grew by 15.8%, more than double the San Francisco gain of 7.2%. During the same period, the land area of the San Francisco urban area declined 1.9%.
There are six smaller urban areas denser than Los Angeles, the largest of which is Arvin, California, in Kern County, about 100 miles north of the Los Angeles central business district. The Arvin urban area had 19.385 residents in 2020.
The Los Angeles urban population density was 7.476 per square mile (2,876 per square kilometer), a 6.8% increase from the 2010 figure of 6,999. The population rose 0.7%, while the land area was reduced 5.7%, with the urban area criteria changes between the 2010 and 2020 censuses. The densest urban area was Mecca, California, located in Riverside County, east of Palm Springs and about 140 miles east of the Los Angeles central business district. Mecca had a density of 10,979.
Six of the 10 densest urban areas with more than 500,000 residents are in California (Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Diego, Fresno and Bakersfield, as well as nearby Las Vegas (Figure 1).
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New York’s not being the nation’s densest major urban area seems perplexing to many. The key to the high Los Angeles UA density is its small single-family lot size (photograph above). The average detached house lot in Los Angeles is 0.15 acres, approximately one-half the major metropolitan area average, and nearly 20% smaller than the average New York metropolitan area detached house size.
These small lots are typical of virtually all California urban areas. California has 35 of the 43 densest urban areas of all sizes in the nation. Indeed, California has the highest urban density of any state.
Perhaps the ultimate irony is that Los Angeles, so long demeaned by some planners as the ultimate in “sprawl” is, in fact, the least sprawling major urban area in the United States in relation to its land area.
Click the link for the complete article and graphs/graphics:
https://www.newgeography.com/content...us-bureau-data