Cities grow more than suburbs, first time in 100 years

[MonkeyRonin]

Originally Posted by pesto

Zero medium or highrise.

I see at least three mid-rises in that picture alone.

Its dense, walkable, mixed-use (even if mostly residential), and has decent transit access - sounds like a fairly urban neighbourhood to me. Of course, there are varying shades of "urbanity" - its not an either/or urban/suburban thing. Though, by American standards, the Sunset is unquestionably urban.

[fflint]

Pesto claims far-flung, low-density autocentric suburbs like Fremont and Walnut Creek have "great transit" and San Francisco's Sunset District is "quite suburban" with "no transit." Alas, none of that is obviously true.

Fremont and Walnut Creek, with very low population densities of 2,763 and 3,246 persons per square mile respectively, are unquestionably suburban and autocentric. Both do have some local bus service and each is served by BART until about midnight, the witching hour for public transit in the suburbs. Fremont's BART station sees 7,670 average daily riders; Walnut Creek's has 6,236 daily riders.

The Sunset District has a population density of 14,934 ppsm. The area enjoys 24-hour bus service and is served by two SF Muni light rail lines, including the city's busiest, the N Judah, which sees 45,252 daily boardings--more passengers on average than entire light rail systems in some other US cities. The other rail line serving the Sunset, the L Taraval, sees 29,842 daily boardings.

Pesto's dubious claims rely, as usual, only upon ludicrous personal definitions for phrases like "suburban," "great transit" and "no transit" that are divorced from reality in order to fit his weird obsession with abasing San Francisco.

[M II A II R II K]

Why You Should Be Skeptical of Statistics on City vs. Suburban Population Growth


Jul 13, 2012

By Eric Jaffe

Read More: http://www.theatlanticcities.com/art...n-growth/2571/

.....

Take the shifts in metropolitan Atlanta. According to the Census, the downtown area grew at 2.4 percent while the suburbs grew at only 1.3 percent — a clear relative gain for the city. But the suburbs are much more populated to begin with, King reminds us. That means only 10,135 more people settled in the city, while 63,226 more settled in suburbia. In absolute terms, just 14 percent of metro Atlanta growth occurred downtown.

- King's reservations may dampen an urbanist spirit or two, but his point isn't that cities aren't catching up to suburbs — just that these particular numbers don't declare a victor. Unlike many writers who have taken the suburban side in this ongoing debate, King comes at things with an impartial hope that stronger evidence will inform better planning. We asked him to expand on his points a bit for Atlantic Cities readers. "There's a lot of people who like to live in cities — I certainly count myself as one of them," King says. "I would like to see more discussion on: are we happy with the magnitude of the effects we're seeing."

- Most of what was actually reported was essentially that the central cities and the suburbs are growing at about the same rate. That seems reasonable. But again, in absolute terms, because we've been suburbanizing for so long, it's really is a very small effect on the overall city. When we're talking about the success stories of downtown revivals, we're talking about a couple thousand people. We're just not talking about big numbers. Not to say this is bad but it's certainly not enough to say that there's been a sea change — a substantial change in the way people approach cities.

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