San Francisco (and other U.S. cities) and the 1 million mark

[jd3189]

An old article but give some background on what's going on.

http://archives.sfexaminer.com/sanfr...nt?oid=2659836

Although SF is growing rapidly once more, it is sort of unique that it's still under one million in population. Yeah, I know cities like Boston, D.C., Seattle, and Portland are also below a million and are relatively dense but SF is significantly denser than all of them. It does have land constraints (being a peninsula) and is small, but still is a beast in terms of American urbanism. What has been cutting it short from the likes of NYC, Chicago, and Philly?

Aside from SF, other American cities can be analyzed in terms of development patterns and built densities.

[mhays]

What do you mean "cutting it short"? How is it short of Philly? Philly is a good, dense city, but SF would be ahead of it by most measures.

[gtbassett]

San Francisco is 49 square miles of land.

No other major American city is anywhere near that small.

[jd3189]

^^^
Boston and Miami come to mind, especially the latter. But yes, SF packs the most despite its size.

Originally Posted by mhays

What do you mean "cutting it short"? How is it short of Philly? Philly is a good, dense city, but SF would be ahead of it by most measures.

I'm not saying that this limits SF, but one similarity that kinda distinguishes the extra major US cities from the others is population size. SF is very well among the likes of NYC, Philly, and Chicago in very way except population, which cuts it short somewhat. SF is denser than Philly, but it still is under a million. Doesn't mean much, but it is interesting how it manages to be like that.

[NorthernDancer]

Originally Posted by jd3189

but it is interesting how it manages to be like that.

Not really, no.

[mhays]

Agreed that it doesn't mean much.

In some cities the central-most administrative district isn't very large. That doesn't mean much for what's on the ground, if the neighboring administrative zones have similar zoning, etc.

When the City of London was a few thousand residents and a ton of office workers in a square mile, pretty recently, nobody worried about London not being prominent. It was simply how the local administration was set up.

[Shawn]

This could be more a discussion on the benefits of annexation to better optimize core cities' tax bases, but yeah, administrative borders are generally arbitrary and don't have much impact on how big a city feels.

Boston is 58 sq miles. Add 20 more sq miles from the rest of Suffolk County, plus Cambridge and the Middlesex cities across the Charles and you pass 1 million people too.

Or on the other hand, consider that there is no City of Tokyo. Just 23 independent municipalities (the Special Wards) which share a bunch of public goods services. Doesn't make "Tokyo" smaller than NYC, for example.

[dave8721]

Originally Posted by gtbassett

San Francisco is 49 square miles of land.

No other major American city is anywhere near that small.

As others have pointed out Miami is only 35.7 square miles. And Boston only has 48.4 square miles of dry land.

[destroycreate]

I actually think realistically SF city boundaries should've extended down to Daly City and South San Francisco. In that case, it's well over 1 million.

[iheartthed]

Most people don't really think about SF not having 1 million residents much at all. Nobody pays more attention to Phoenix, San Antonio, San Diego or San Jose than they do San Francisco, even though those cities all have +1 million residents.

[StethJeff]

Originally Posted by jd3189

^^^
Boston and Miami come to mind, especially the latter. But yes, SF packs the most despite its size.





I'm not saying that this limits SF, but one similarity that kinda distinguishes the extra major US cities from the others is population size. SF is very well among the likes of NYC, Philly, and Chicago in very way except population, which cuts it short somewhat. SF is denser than Philly, but it still is under a million. Doesn't mean much, but it is interesting how it manages to be like that.

And there you have it. Applies to the thread as well.

[toddguy]

More in the doesn't mean much category.

Jacksonville Florida city and San Francisco city have almost identical numbers of people

San Francisco is 47 square miles of land, Jacksonville is 747 square miles of land.

Now which is the larger more important city?

[jg6544]

Originally Posted by gtbassett

San Francisco is 49 square miles of land.

No other major American city is anywhere near that small.

And it can't grow out so as it adds population, the density will have to increase. There is a limit to how dense the City is going to allow itself to become.

[fflint]

There are 19,429 cities in the United States. Only 10 of them have 1,000,000 or more residents, and no, San Francisco isn't one of them. So what?

[toddguy]

Originally Posted by fflint

There are 19,429 cities in the United States. Only 10 of them have 1,000,000 or more residents, and no, San Francisco isn't one of them. So what?

San Francisco better keep up the densification! Columbus is right behind(less than 17,000 behind) and might actually surpass San Francisco and become the BIGGER city! lol

*Columbus will celebrate this event if it occurs by constructing a giant concrete cow that will complement the concrete field of giant corn in the suburb of Dublin.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Field_of_Corn

[jd3189]

What I'm trying to concentrate on is the built area, not the geographically size of a city so much. I want this thread to concentrate of density patterns within SF and other cities. I probably should mention NYC as an example. Aside from Manhattan (which cannot be compared as it is at another level ), the outer boroughs are pretty much lowrise/midrise (like SF and a few other cities) but 3 of them (Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens) have higher densities than any other city in the country. What makes them so dense and what makes our older large cities different from our younger ones?

I want to know about the development patterns that causes places to reach these types of densities and perhaps photos detailing it. Land area doesn't matter since certain cities have already proven it worthless, but I am curious about the development pattern, building types, etc, because it is the most important factor in the density of an city. By looking at that, we can see how other cities can densify without losing their character. SF is an interesting case because it and those three outer boroughs are possibly the best models of urbanism for many U.S. cities, but what does that consist of?

Originally Posted by Shawn

This could be more a discussion on the benefits of annexation to better optimize core cities' tax bases, but yeah, administrative borders are generally arbitrary and don't have much impact on how big a city feels.

Boston is 58 sq miles. Add 20 more sq miles from the rest of Suffolk County, plus Cambridge and the Middlesex cities across the Charles and you pass 1 million people too.

Or on the other hand, consider that there is no City of Tokyo. Just 23 independent municipalities (the Special Wards) which share a bunch of public goods services. Doesn't make "Tokyo" smaller than NYC, for example.

Annexation can be discussed, but it doesn't add too much to density as it takes away.

[mhays]

If the topic is changing to density gradients, that's more interesting. San Francisco does well in that regard.

[StethJeff]

Originally Posted by mhays

If the topic is changing to density gradients, that's more interesting. San Francisco does well in that regard.

Maybe the thread needs to be re-titled then. Generally if the first page of a thread is people dismissing the topic altogether and the OP having to re-justify its existence a few times, it doesn't bode well.

[dc_denizen]

A list of US cities: SF has 3.3 million people.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o...es_urban_areas


1 New York--Newark, NY—NJ—CT 18,351,295 8,936.0 3,450.2 2,053.6 5,318.9
2 Los Angeles--Long Beach--Anaheim, CA 12,150,996 4,496.3 1,736.0 2,702.5 6,999.3
3 Chicago, IL—IN 8,608,208 6,326.7 2,442.8 1,360.6 3,524.0
4 Miami, FL 5,502,379 3,208.0 1,238.6 1,715.2 4,442.4
5 Philadelphia, PA—NJ—DE—MD 5,441,567 5,131.7 1,981.4 1,060.4 2,746.4
6 Dallas--Fort Worth--Arlington, TX 5,121,892 4,607.9 1,779.1 1,111.5 2,878.9
7 Houston, TX 4,944,332 4,299.4 1,660.0 1,150.0 2,978.5
8 Washington, DC—VA—MD 4,586,770 3,423.3 1,321.7 1,339.9 3,470.3
9 Atlanta, GA 4,515,419 6,851.4 2,645.4 659.0 1,706.9
10 Boston, MA—NH—RI 4,181,019 4,852.2 1,873.5 861.7 2,231.7
11 Detroit, MI 3,734,090 3,463.2 1,337.2 1,078.2 2,792.5
12 Phoenix--Mesa, AZ 3,629,114 2,969.6 1,146.6 1,222.1 3,165.2
13 San Francisco--Oakland, CA 3,281,212 1,356.2 523.6 2,419.5 6,266.4
14 Seattle, WA 3,059,393 2,616.7 1,010.3 1,169.2 3,028.2
15 San Diego, CA 2,956,746 1,896.9 732.4 1,558.7 4,037.0
16 Minneapolis--St. Paul, MN—WI 2,650,890 2,646.5 1,021.8 1,001.7 2,594.3
17 Tampa--St. Petersburg, FL 2,441,770 2,478.6 957.0 985.1 2,551.5
18 Denver--Aurora, CO 2,374,203 1,730.0 668.0 1,372.4 3,554.4
19 Baltimore, MD 2,203,663 1,857.1 717.0 1,186.6 3,073.

[mhays]

I'd say it has 8,000,000. There's more than one way to define a metro. Or at least the whole Bay Area.