Population density patterns in cities (NYC and Chicago as a starter)

[memph]

Here are the weighted densities for the Canadian urban areas.

2011 Census Densities in PPSM (Population)

Toronto: 14,853 (5,178,773)
Montreal: 14,128 (3,299,497)
Vancouver: 12,093 (2,189,688)
Ottawa: 7,747 (1,022,490)
Hamilton: 7,743 (693,793)
Winnipeg: 7,643 (673,856)
Calgary: 7,228 (1,101,023)
Quebec City: 6,759 (704,772)
Edmonton: 6,457 (878,827)
Victoria: 6,145 (303,963)
London: 6,106 (376,032)
Regina: 5,992 (193,100)
Kitchener: 5,872 (462,262)
Oshawa: 5,820 (297,808)
Saskatoon: 5,686 (222,079)
Halifax: 5,472 (328,962)
Windsor: 5,193 (283,940)

[CyberEric]

Originally Posted by memph

I don't think so, as far as I know they don't use census tracts. I would need information on something roughly the size of a census tract, boroughs are to big to make a useful comparison.

Gotcha. I wonder how they count population then, it can't be by borough can it?

Those Canada numbers are interesting, thanks!

[memph]

I'm currently working on calculating the 2010 weighted densities of some US urban areas. Taking into account intensification, sprawl and decreasing household sizes, are there any people think might get denser? I'm wondering if Atlanta might go up a fair bit, it was so low density it's hard to imagine getting any less dense, and there was supposedly quite a lot of infill.

[mhays]

A lot of places are seeing infill. But even the same places are almost always expanding outward.

Even those of us who have mandated limits on sprawl still allow it to some extent. Sometimes it's due to the room we always have between the current development and the "outer line," and other times (particularly in my state) it's due to bad practices being grandfathered from many years ago if the land use permit made it in beforehand.

The UA cutoff is apparently 1,000/sm. A lot of areas that are a mix of horse farms or forests interspersed by housing fall maybe a little below that. It doesn't take much new crap sometimes to add that area to the over-1000 set.

Then of course you have leapfrogging. Sometimes it's crossing the lake or hill that used to stop sprawl. Other times it's the next county over having lax rules.

[memph]

Here are the urban areas I've done so far.

Note that SF's urban area doesn't include the San Jose MSA and the Pleasanton-Concord-Vallejo corridor. SF's urban area is basically Fremont to Crocket and Navato to Menlo Park. Fun fact: the San Quentin prison is the 4th densest census tract in SF's urban area.

Also note that LA's urban area doesn't include the Riverside-San Bernardino corridor although it includes parts of San Bernardino County up to Fontana. This is just following the census defined area which probably doesn't include Riverside or the city of San Bernardino because of commuting patterns. LA's urban area also doesn't include the Simi Valley, Thousand Oaks and Mission Viejo, the Simi Valley and Santa Clarita, which are a bit separate from an urbanized land point of view.

Los Angeles actually seems to have more people living above x density than anywhere outside New York if x is any number below 67,800 ppsm. Above that point SF comes out slightly ahead, although it only has 54,000 people living above that density.

San Francisco
2000: 15,032 ppsm (2,995,769)
2010: 14,740 ppsm (3,306,927)

Los Angeles
2000: 12,557 ppsm (11,789,487)
2010: 12,543 ppsm (12,238,786)

Phoenix
2000: 5,238 ppsm (2,907,049)
2010: 4,716 ppsm (3,833,048)

Miami
2000: 6,810 ppsm (4,919,036)
2010: 7,445 ppsm (5,517,315)

[edluva]

los angeles is a beast - 12 million people in 12,000 plus weighted density dwarfs anything outside of nyc. i wonder what happens when we cut los angeles off at 19-20k densities - how may people live in such densities compared with chicago and toronto

[Easy]

Originally Posted by Segun

^ single family detached homes in Chicago only account for rougly 25% of the housing in the city. Its not the most common. The bungalow belt is large because single family homes obviously take up more space. Chicago's neighborhoods between the bungalow belt and the lakefront highrises are a mix of 2-flats, 3-flats, and 3-4 story Apartment buildings and its where the majority of the people live.


Here's the stats from the census

Total Units: 1,152,871


1-unit, detached

285,978

24.81%


1-unit, attached

39,263

3.41%


2 units

202,962

17.6%


3 or 4 units

166,021

14.4%


5 to 9 units

121,964

10.58%


10 to 19 units

67,262

5.83%


20 or more units

267,474

23.2%


Mobile home

1,630

0.14%


Boat, RV, van, etc.

317

0.03%


Would be interested in seeing units in structure for more cities.

Based on those numbers, single family housing may account for 25% of where people live, but in terms of total numbers of each type of structure single family detached housing accounts for over 50% of all of the housing structures in Chicago. The percentages below are for each type of structure assuming that the muti-unit structures have the minimum number of units for each category (ie all of the 10-19 units structures are all 10 units) thereby maximizing the number of structures for each category.

1 unit detached - 54% of all housing structures
1 unit attached - 7%
2 units - 19%
3 units - 11%
5 units - 5%
10 units - 1%
20 units - 3%

[memph]

Originally Posted by edluva

los angeles is a beast - 12 million people in 12,000 plus weighted density dwarfs anything outside of nyc. i wonder what happens when we cut los angeles off at 19-20k densities - how may people live in such densities compared with chicago and toronto

Indeed it does.

Population over 20,000 ppsm

Los Angeles UA: 1,956,347 (15.99%)
Chicago UA: 1,120,257 (12.52%)
Toronto UA: 993,659 (19.19%)

[brickell]

Where are you getting your numbers from memph? Are you manually picking out the urban area tracts?

[memph]

Originally Posted by brickell

Where are you getting your numbers from memph? Are you manually picking out the urban area tracts?

Maybe.

Chicago
2000: 10,270 ppsm (8,307,904)
2010: 9,125 ppsm (8,814,602)
2010 including Kenosha: 9,047 ppsm (8,944,424)

Houston
2000: 4,514 ppsm (3,822,509)
2010: 4,589 ppsm (5,153,230)
2010 including Conroe: 4,554 ppsm (5,212,160)

Houston's urban area merged with Conroe, TX and Chicago's merged with Kenosha, WI so I have the numbers before and after. There were probably some smaller mergers as well that are included in the first 2010 values.

[Cory]

I know you did San Francisco but would you have any stats for some of the denser areas of the East Bay such as Berkeley and Oakland?

[memph]

Originally Posted by WesternGulf

I know you did San Francisco but would you have any stats for some of the denser areas of the East Bay such as Berkeley and Oakland?

Berkeley: 18,394 ppsm (113,000)
Oakland: 14,014 ppsm (390,000)
San Pablo: 12,327 ppsm (33,000)
Albany: 11,111 ppsm (19,000)
Alameda: 10,600 ppsm (74,000)

[memph]

While I'm slowly chugging away at NYC, Washington and Boston, here's a graph comparing the density distribution of San Francisco-Oakland and Toronto, which are have very similar weighted densities (Toronto just edges out SF).

The first graph show the percent of people living at certain densities and the second shows the total population at those densities. The official definition for San Francisco's urban area doesn't include San Jose, so Toronto's UA population is larger. I think for the 2010 census the urban areas will include all urbanized land in a CSA instead of the 2000 definition of all contiguous urbanized land in a MSA (more or less), so in order to be able to compare to the 2000 values, I followed the 2000 rules for 2010.

[Cory]

Originally Posted by memph

Berkeley: 18,394 ppsm (113,000)
Oakland: 14,014 ppsm (390,000)
San Pablo: 12,327 ppsm (33,000)
Albany: 11,111 ppsm (19,000)
Alameda: 10,600 ppsm (74,000)

Thanks alot. No surprises surprisingly. Although I'm aware of Berkeley's relatively small city limits and how much is uninhabited hilly terrain, along with Oakland, I did not expect that number to be that high.

[CyberEric]

Very interesting how similar SF and Toronto are in terms of weighted density. Thank you very much.
I too was surprised at the weighted density for the East Bay.

[Thundertubs]

Fun thread.

How are people getting these numbers?

Can anyone do the weighted densities of Newark and Jersey City, NJ?

[memph]

I don't think it's too surprising. You can have a census tract of single family homes at above 20,000 ppsm although more typically for small lot single family homes it would be around 15,000 ppsm. Berkeley and Oakland mostly consist of single family homes on small lots and low rise apartments, with only a small number of single family homes on larger lots, mostly in the hills around Oakland.

The former inner suburbs of York and East York in Toronto have weighted densities of 19,716 and 23,494 respectively, and are also mostly single family homes, although with a bit more highrise apartments.

Here's a comparison of San Francisco and Los Angeles.

[memph]

I did two other urban areas, both of which saw their weighted densities increase. In the case of Boston, the urban area didn't really expand outwards. There was greenfield development, but it was mostly filling in gaps of undeveloped land. Washington had fairly substantial TODs built, so it's not too surprising it's weighted density increased.

Washington
2000: 6,835 ppsm (3,933,920)
2010: 7,405 ppsm (4,652,979)

Boston
2000: 7,711 ppsm (4,032,484)
2010: 8,159 ppsm (4,458,009)

[Chicago103]

I have become fascinated with google earth streetviews of Brooklyn. The borough is completely caked with residential buildings for 71 square miles with only a few parks and cemeteries interrupting the density. Brooklyn alone is only 200K shy of Chicago's population and yet the former is 71 square miles and the latter 227 square miles.

In Chicago as I said earlier there are several areas that have Brooklyn level density but nowhere is it continuous more than a few square miles because many of our neighborhoods border huge industrial/brownfields/railroad-yards/etc that always brings the density numbers down. A case in point is the Little Village neighborhood on Chicago's southwest side, the residential areas have a population density of between 30-40K per square mile but the industrial areas to the south are massive and thus the community area only has a density of about 20K, the same is true of Pilsen. Even on the north side lakefront if you get more than a mile inland you start to hit industrial areas along the north branch of the river. The Near North Side as dense as it is just barely hits the 30K per square mile threshold, this is because of Goose Island industrial areas as well as empty land from the demolition of Cabrini Green.

Also if you travel west of the Loop more than a mile there is a huge warehouse area now often considered part of the West Loop that don't even hit the 10K per square mile threshold in spite of all the condo construction. It makes me realize how relatively empty parts of central Chicago are and makes me mad at NIMBY's Nowhere in New York City can you be as close to a supertall skyscraper and have that low residential density as you do when you go west or south of the Sears Tower, I mean less than a mile south there is a huge empty field and stores with huge parking lots and almost no residents. I admit to being a bit envious and sorry for the rant but I am trying to make this be strictly for comparative purposes as it has fascinated me as of late.

[fflint]

^Doesn't weighted density take unpopulated land like industrial sites into account? I thought that was the whole point--the density at which people actually live, in the places they actually live?