Which U.S. Cities Have Changed The Most This Decade?

[mhays]

You said "most of Detroit's extremely dense neighborhoods," and so that's the topic I responded about, not citywide averages.

[skyscraperpage17]

Originally Posted by mhays

You said "most of Detroit's extremely dense neighborhoods," and so that's the topic I responded about, not citywide averages.

They're not mutually exclusive.

The overall point is, Detroit was an extremely dense city during its prime (in fact, one of the densest in the country). To compare it to San Jose or Savannah (or even suggest LA is more dense than Detroit was) doesn't do it justice.

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by goat314

St. Louis and Detroit are really not good examples for this, because they were nearly as dense as Chicago in 1950. They are not as dense today, because of years of de-industrialization, a comparative lack of immigration, transportation policy (on the local, state, and federal level), extreme white flight, etc. You are right that the age a city was founded is not important in determining urbanity, but the 'age of development" certainly is. St. Louis and Detroit have a lot of very urban and dense blocks, but there is also way too much abandonment and void spaces. That's why St. Louis and Detroit can lose 2/3rds of their of population, and still be technically denser than Atlanta or Austin. The dense, urban parts of the city, outweigh the vast zones of urban prairie and boarded buildings.

If you overlay Detroit's 1950 density by census tract map over a Google map of the city, then you can see clearly that Detroit was severely damaged by urban renewal projects in the mid-20th century. All of the densest tracts in the mid-20th century were destroyed by freeways in slum clearing efforts by the city and state government.



http://mapscroll.blogspot.com/2009/0...f-detroit.html

If you squint at the two grey blocks in the upper middle of the map, those are two different municipalities that are surrounded by Detroit. Other than being different municipalities, they are pretty similar in built form to the areas of Detroit that border the two cities. The city on the right is Hamtramck, and currently is at about 11,000 ppsm... At it's peak The population density of the Hamtramck was close to 25,000 ppsm, as were the surrounding areas on the Detroit side of the border.

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by skyscraperpage17

They're not mutually exclusive.

The overall point is, Detroit was an extremely dense city during its prime (in fact, one of the densest in the country). To compare it to San Jose or Savannah (or even suggest LA is more dense than Detroit was) doesn't do it justice.

Detroit had pretty high density at its peak, but like LA in the modern day, the built form was a bit underwhelming.

Detroit never had the multifamily and rowhouse density like the Eastern cities; it was more large numbers of people packed into SFHs. You probably didn't quite get the same street-level feel as cities with similar human density yet higher structural density.

Also, the peak density areas were black ghettos forced into massive overcrowding due to racist housing patterns. While this wasn't unique to Detroit, the horrible overcrowding in areas like Black Bottom/Paradise Valley was probably a bit of a national outlier, considering the Detroit auto boom and extreme local housing shortage of the time. Detroit was kinda like Silicon Valley back then, with ridiculous affordability issues.

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by Crawford

Detroit had pretty high density at its peak, but like LA in the modern day, the built form was a bit underwhelming.

Detroit never had the multifamily and rowhouse density like the Eastern cities; it was more large numbers of people packed into SFHs. You probably didn't quite get the same street-level feel as cities with similar human density yet higher structural density.

Detroit did have some rowhouse neighborhoods, but I don't think rowhouses were very common in any midwest city. That said, Detroit had a LOT of multi-family housing in the form of multi-dwelling housing units and apartment buildings. Detroit was far more dense than current day L.A. It looked more like current day Chicago in its heyday.

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by goat314

St. Louis and Detroit are really not good examples for this, because they were nearly as dense as Chicago in 1950.

while the gap was not nearly as large as it is today, even in 1950 chicago was still 25-30% more densely populated than st. louis and detroit.

but your general point still stands. of the US cities over 250,000 people in 1950, st. louis and detroit were certainly among the densest:


1950 U.S. Census - cities over 250,000 people ranked by average density:

1. New York city, NY......... 25,046 ppsm
2. Jersey City city, NJ....... 23,001 ppsm
3. Newark city, NJ............ 18,592 ppsm
4. Chicago city, IL............ 17,450 ppsm
5. San Francisco city, CA... 17,385 ppsm
6. Boston city, MA............ 16,767 ppsm
7. Philadelphia city, PA...... 16,286 ppsm
8. Buffalo city, NY............. 14,724 ppsm
9. St. Louis city, MO......... 14,046 ppsm
10. Detroit city, MI............. 13,249 ppsm
    
    
11. Washington city, DC...... 13,065 ppsm
12. Milwaukee city, WI........ 12,748 ppsm
13. Pittsburgh city, PA......... 12,487 ppsm
14. Cleveland city, OH......... 12,197 ppsm
15. Baltimore city, MD......... 12,067 ppsm
16. Minneapolis city, MN........ 9,697 ppsm
17. Columbus city, OH........... 9,541 ppsm
18. Louisville city, KY............. 9,251 ppsm
19. Rochester city, NY............ 9,236 ppsm
20. Atlanta city, GA............... 8,979 ppsm
    
    
21. Toledo city, OH............... 7,927 ppsm
22. Indianapolis city, IN........ 7,739 ppsm
23. Oakland city, CA............. 7,256 ppsm
24. Long Beach city, CA........ 7,227 ppsm
25. Cincinnati city, OH.......... 6,711 ppsm
26. Seattle city, WA.............. 6,604 ppsm
27. Denver city, CO.............. 6,224 ppsm
28. Omaha city, NE.............. 6,170 ppsm
29. St. Paul city, MN............. 5,965 ppsm
30. San Antonio city, TX........ 5,877 ppsm
    
    
31. Portland city, OR............. 5,829 ppsm
32. Kansas City city, MO........ 5,665 ppsm
33. Akron city, OH................ 5,114 ppsm
34. Birmingham city, AL........ 4,993 ppsm
35. Los Angeles city, CA........ 4,370 ppsm
36. Dallas city, TX................ 3,879 ppsm
37. Memphis city, TN............ 3,800 ppsm
38. Houston city, TX............. 3,726 ppsm
39. San Diego city, CA.......... 3,364 ppsm
40. Fort Worth city, TX.......... 2,975 ppsm
    
    
41. New Orleans city, LA....... 2,861 ppsm

source: http://www.census.gov/population/www...0027/tab18.txt

[Centropolis]

Originally Posted by iheartthed

Detroit did have some rowhouse neighborhoods, but I don't think rowhouses were very common in any midwest city.

in the ohio valley they were/are very common, and pre-urban renewal made up a huge amount of the innermost neighborhoods...most housing units perhaps in cincinnati and st. louis (more or less an extension of the ohio valley) before say 1890. st. louis and cincy of course still have single neighborhoods primarily composed of rows, even if there was a massive around of demolition of them as they were seen as slums.

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by Centropolis

in the ohio valley they were/are very common, and pre-urban renewal made up a huge amount of the innermost neighborhoods...most housing units perhaps in cincinnati and st. louis (more or less an extension of the ohio valley) before say 1890. st. louis and cincy of course still have single neighborhoods primarily composed of rows, even if there was a massive around of demolition of them as they were seen as slums.

It would make sense that Cincinnati and St. Louis would have more examples of row houses left since those are the two oldest cities in the Midwest.
Respectively, they were first and second in the Midwest to reach big city status, and they were becoming "big" at the same time that the east coast cities were also becoming "big."

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

while the gap was not nearly as large as it is today, even in 1950 chicago was still 25-30% more densely populated than st. louis and detroit.

This also might be a function of Detroit annexing sparsely populated townships in the 1920s. In 1920, the density difference between Detroit and Chicago was less than 10%. Detroit was already at about 1M residents by then. Detroit annexed a bunch of surrounding areas in the 1920s and nearly doubled its land area, going from 77 sq miles to 137 sq miles. Chicago only added 8 sq miles during the same time. The on paper density of Detroit decreased, but I'm pretty sure the feel was closer to what it was in 1920, if not even more dense.