Chicago still headed for megacity status: report

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by iheartthed

I don't see why the same wouldn't be true of the Golden Horseshoe.

i wouldn't know either way. i don't give too much of a shit about toronto or its horsehoes (besides, jacksonville has a better skyline anyway).

i'm merely saying that using the census bureau's MSA/CSA definition as the size of chicagoland is goofball nonsense. most of chicago's MSA/CSA is cornfields.

on the other hand, the urban area definition comes billions of times closer to defining the actual urban extent and size of chicagoland.

[Emprise du Lion]

Originally Posted by yuriandrade

That's why people say Washington-Baltimore instead of Washington only or Cleveland-Akron and so on. In a different scale, that's what happened with Minneapolis-St. Paul way in the past. It's polycentric areas and there are plenty of examples worldwide.

About Cleveland and Akron, they form a single urban area. You cannot tell where one starts and other finishes.

Even if things were similar in the distant past, Minneapolis and St. Paul of today share a city limit boundary. Merging distinct metro areas on a larger scale is a much more recent phenomenon that isn't really that comparable anymore.

As for Cleveland and Akron sharing an urban area, don't you think it's peculiar that two cities that can sprawl into each other still have such a low connection to each other they haven't been able to form a MSA and still maintain highly seperate identities?

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

i wouldn't know either way. i don't give too much of a shit about toronto or its horsehoes (besides, jacksonville has a better skyline anyway).

i'm merely saying that using the census bureau's CSA definition as the size of chicagoland is goofball nonsense. most of chicago's CSA is cornfields.

on the other hand, the urban area definition comes billions of times closer to defining the actual urban extent of chicagoland.

Yes, my point is that we've identified definitions of each area that offer pretty similar stats. We know central city Toronto is very similar in size to central city Chicago. We know Chicago CSA is roughly similar in land area to Golden Horseshoe. We know populations of both are similar. Unless we're going to say that something is wildly different about Toronto and Chicago that isn't captured in these macro stats... this is a pretty good comparison.

[Sun Belt]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

i wouldn't know either way. i don't give too much of a shit about toronto or its horsehoes (besides, jacksonville has a better skyline anyway).

i'm merely saying that using the census bureau's CSA definition as the size of chicagoland is goofball nonsense. most of chicago's CSA is cornfields.

on the other hand, the urban area definition comes billions of times closer to defining the actual urban extent of chicagoland.

Welcome to Chicago!
https://goo.gl/maps/hB9abokcoqJ2

Welcome to Boston!
https://goo.gl/maps/wJthxXwMJB22

Welcome to Los Angeles!
https://goo.gl/maps/edvRymMhB362

[Austin55]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

neat.
check out these same scale tract density maps. philly is a real city, one of the realest on the continent.

Can I ask the source of this viz? I'd love to play with it. Super interesting.

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by Austin55

Can I ask the source of this viz? I'd love to play with it. Super interesting.

https://www.socialexplorer.com/a9676d974c/explore

[Yuri]

Originally Posted by Emprise du Lion

Even if things were similar in the distant past, Minneapolis and St. Paul of today share a city limit boundary. Merging distinct metro areas on a larger scale is a much more recent phenomenon that isn't really that comparable anymore.

As for Cleveland and Akron sharing an urban area, don't you think it's peculiar that two cities that can sprawl into each other still have such a low connection to each other they haven't been able to form a MSA and still maintain highly seperate identities?

Metropolitan areas are not only about identities, that’s why polycentric ones are quite common. Dallas-Fort Worth, Osaka-Kobe-Kyoto, the Ruhr (and now Rhine-Ruhr), Leeds-Bradford, Porto Alegre-Novo Hamburgo, etc. etc., all of them widely regarded as single metro areas for decades.

Things changed, and as population grows, once separated metro areas might merge.

[the urban politician]

Originally Posted by yuriandrade

Metropolitan areas are not only about identities, that’s why polycentric ones are quite common. Dallas-Fort Worth, Osaka-Kobe-Kyoto, the Ruhr (and now Rhine-Ruhr), Leeds-Bradford, Porto Alegre-Novo Hamburgo, etc. etc., all of them widely regarded as single metro areas for decades.

Things changed, and as population grows, once separated metro areas might merge.

Have you ever been to a cornfield?

[Yuri]

Yes. My father used to grow soybeans and maize. My entire family on the father side is rural landowners.

My city Londrina is completely surrounded by soybeans, maize and wheat fields, but unlike the flat US Midwest, full of small hills, woodlands near the creeks, a bit European. The landscape is gorgeous.

[IrishIllini]

Originally Posted by iheartthed

Yes, my point is that we've identified definitions of each area that offer pretty similar stats. We know central city Toronto is very similar in size to central city Chicago. We know Chicago CSA is roughly similar in land area to Golden Horseshoe. We know populations of both are similar. Unless we're going to say that something is wildly different about Toronto and Chicago that isn't captured in these macro stats... this is a pretty good comparison.

Didn't someone just post that the GHS was 13,000 sq mi compared to Chicago's 10,000 sq mi CSA? That's kind of a significant amount of land area. 30% larger. It's 3 Rhode Islands if we're using states for scale.

[The North One]

Originally Posted by yuriandrade

Yes. My father used to grow soybeans and maize. My entire family on the father side is rural landowners.

My city Londrina is completely surrounded by soybeans, maize and wheat fields, but unlike the flat US Midwest, full of small hills, woodlands near the creeks, a bit European. The landscape is gorgeous.

why are you generalizing?

[softee]

Originally Posted by Northern Light

If you wanted to compare your tighter version of Chicago with a tighter version of Toronto, that would be core Golden Horsehoe region of Toronto (As opposed to the Greater Golden Horsehoe).

It doesn't eliminate all agricultural land, but most (a few fruit orchards and wineries in Niagara region still sneak in there). Otherwise you're in a sea of development.

The tighter area is 3,900sq mi or just over 10,000km2

And has a population of 7,800,000.

It would be over 8000,000 as of this year, but if you excluded the undeveloped portions of the core Golden Horseshoe and only counted the contiguously urbanized portion, you'd still have about 7,000,000 people in less than 1000 square miles. Toronto's urban area is much denser than Chicago's.

[bnk]

How about we make the entire providence of Ontario a CSA of Toronto.

Ottawa included. That would put one at ~14 million from Sudbury and Thunder Bay under its influence.

at 1,076,395 km2

Seems about right for some north of the boarder here posting.

[dc_denizen]

Originally Posted by softee

It would be over 8000,000 as of this year, but if you excluded the undeveloped portions of the core Golden Horseshoe and only counted the contiguously urbanized portion, you'd still have about 7,000,000 people in less than 1000 square miles. Toronto's urban area is much denser than Chicago's.

the core is of comparable density. Cook county, IL has 5,600,000 people in 945 square miles.

http://mapmerizer.mikavaa.com/#11;41...se;false;false

however when you compare Brampton to Dupage County, the difference is obvious - toronto has more highrise nodes, and denser LA style suburbia with small yards than what you see in chicago.

http://mapmerizer.mikavaa.com/#13;41...se;false;false

[Steely Dan]

Let's not do a chicago vs. toronto festival of idiocy.

2003 was a LONG time ago.