Different Sprawl Patterns in the U.S. Cities

[hudkina]

Originally Posted by HooverDam

Why do we talk so much about density so much on this board? Its a frankly useless and retarded metric that doesn't tell anyone anything useful. You could build two neighborhoods with the exact same density, one in a sprawl patter and another in a walkable traditional pattern and have two very different places, so why rely on a silly number like density?

It seems it is the Phoenix residents who constantly look at the density numbers and crow about how their "city" is denser than many of the cities in the east.

Further, if we are going to talk about density, lets talk about density per developed square mile. Phoenix has a huge park system, Id assume much larger than any of those cities you listed. For instance South Mountain Park in Phoenix is over 19,000 acres and has a population of 0, so obviously that drives down density.

Urban area population data doesn't include much of the undeveloped areas of Phoenix. In fact, it's the eastern cities that have a much larger share of undeveloped "holes". With the Phoenix urban area the land has been developed so that virtually every acre contains housing or retail. It's easy when your template is a flat desert landscape. Back east there might be hills or river valleys or large forests that are left undeveloped but become engulfed by development. These "protected" lands add a large amount of land to eastern urban areas without adding any population.

[mhays]

There's a valid point that Phoenix's suburbs (and western suburbs in general) tend to be denser than Eastern suburbs.

That doesn't mean Phoenix suburbs are urban or walkable. But using less land and reducing commute distances are inherently huge benefits.

[HooverDam]

Originally Posted by hudkina

Urban area population data doesn't include much of the undeveloped areas of Phoenix.

Welp according to this page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...es_urban_areas

the Phx 'urban area' is still denser than a lot of Eastern cities like DC, Detroit, Baltimore, Philly, Buffalo, Cleveland, etc.

But like I said, density isn't really an interesting thing to me. The Phoenix area has plenty of walkable neighborhoods and theyre probably generally less dense than the newer 'burbs. And at some point density becomes a negative, though what that number is varies on ones personal preference.

[L41A]

Originally Posted by HooverDam

Welp according to this page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...es_urban_areas

the Phx 'urban area' is still denser than a lot of Eastern cities like DC, Detroit, Baltimore, Philly, Buffalo, Cleveland, etc.

But like I said, density isn't really an interesting thing to me. The Phoenix area has plenty of walkable neighborhoods and theyre probably generally less dense than the newer 'burbs. And at some point density becomes a negative, though what that number is varies on ones personal preference.

Phoenix is a popular place and I appreciate you defending it. Nonetheless, I’m glad you put ‘urban area’ in parenthesis. It’s sort of a misnomer according to the definition that the Census use to define it. The Census defines this ‘urban area’ term as contiguous census block groups with a population density of at least 1,000 ppsm with any census block groups around this core having a density of at least 500 ppsm. By definition that sounds very ‘suburban’ to me rather than ‘urban’.

I wish the Census would have found another term than ‘urban’ to describe what they are measuring. It probably would cut down on some confusion. It really illustrates the density of the suburban areas rather than the urban areas. That’s why a place like NYC with over 8 million in area of little more 300 square miles with a density of over 25,000 ppsm falls to density of 5,309 ppsm using this definition.

I agree the suburban areas of metropolitan areas of the western US are generally more dense than their eastern counterparts. It illustrates how the country was developed and the topography of the areas. The East is very green with lots or rivers, creeks, lakes, etc while the West is more arid, dry, brown and mountainous which contains development in a more defined area. The East has cities, towns, villages all over the place with strong centers which are sometimes older than today’s main large metropolitan area of which the smaller cities and towns may consist. In the West, there are the major cities and then nothing – a more definitive cut off.

On original topic, the different sprawl in the US is complex but topography, jurisdiction boundary, time of development, etc are important parameters.

[hudkina]

Originally Posted by HooverDam

Welp according to this page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...es_urban_areas

the Phx 'urban area' is still denser than a lot of Eastern cities like DC, Detroit, Baltimore, Philly, Buffalo, Cleveland, etc.

In a sense it is, but if you take the core of the eastern metros the density is much higher than Phoenix. For example, Phoenix had 2.9 million people in 800 sq. mi., but with Detroit it only takes a little over 625 sq. mi. to encircle 2.9 million people. In other words the 2.9 million person "core" of Phoenix had a density of 3,600 ppsm, while the 2.9 million person "core" of Detroit had a density of 4,500 ppsm. That's nearly 1,000 more people per square mile on average.

[hammersklavier]

When you take that Census definition, it feels to me almost like everything from Portland, Maine south to Newport News, Virginia, would be considered a single agglomerated "urban area". How, then, do you tease out the Philadelphia suburbs from the Baltimore-Washington suburbs from the New York suburbs from the Boston suburbs? Are there any defining characteristics that make Philadelphia suburbs, say, distinct from Boston's? And worse, what about the fact that the oldest suburbs of these cities, places like Newark, NJ, Camden, NJ, or Cambridge, MA, have grown into cities in their own right? What about the fact that Wilmington, DE, and Trenton, NJ, now effectively function as edge nodes linking two urban areas together rather than delimiting edges? What about the fact that poverty in the Northeast is spread among the older urban centers rather than concentrated into the districts outside the oldest urban center the way it is in, say, L.A. or Phoenix? The issue here is that it's impossible to compare the Sunbelt cities to the Northeast and Rust Belt cities in the terms we'd like to since in the Sunbelt the automobile suburbs are the built shape of the city as a whole whereas in the Northeast and Rust Belt the automobile suburbs are effectively incidental to the city as an urban center, in much the same way that suburbs like Sucy-en-Brie are incidental to Paris as an urban center and the way we understand Paris as such? We understand places like Phoenix in terms of their very suburban nature, and so, while Phoenix's suburbs are much denser than Kansas City's, since effectively the whole urban area is carpeted in them, we have a hard time distinguishing a real urban center, a downtown, the way we can with Philadelphia or Portland or St. Louis.

[M II A II R II K]

Parks Are Sprawl-Preventers


05/04/2010

Read More: http://dirt.asla.org/2010/05/04/inte...ltural-spaces/

Summary:

Kathryn Gustafson of the firm Gustafson Guthrie Nichol says that urban parks are an antidote to sprawl because they give city dwellers the room to breathe that often drives them to the suburbs.

Gustafson says, "One of the reason people move out to the suburbs is to have some sort of space, some sort of breathing room. The interior spaces of landscape in the city can replace that. They're there to enable healthy living. Urban spaces allow you to take out your children, walk your dog, or exercise. Parks provide a place to just stop and rest for a moment, stop and think about where you’re going and what you’re doing. Those are the roles of urban space in the city.

I agree with Chaka Fattah of Philadelphia that urban parks can no longer be separated from broader urban revitalization efforts. That's absolutely correct. They are the effort — the central core of that effort." The American Society of Landscape Architects interviewed Gustafson on a number of subjects, ranging from the idea of a national design policy to the growing role of landscape architects in American cities.

[hammersklavier]

That doesn't quite sound so accurate to me. Did the vast Fairmount Park network prevent sprawl in Philadelphia? No, of course not: but properly maintained parks can be a viable amenity in the task of bringing people back to the city.

[austin242]

Maybe that means you need alot of diffent types of parks near downtown you know Natural looking ones for those types of people Manicured for others and Playscapes for kids lots of variety. I would say austin has all that but we don't have any true manicured parks that I can think of inless the capitol grounds count, but I would like to think stuff like this helps so austin can become more urban.

[dweebo2220]

edit

[dweebo2220]

If you are interested in these kinds of things, I suggest you research "weighted density," which is much more helpful for the kind of discussion happening here. The Austin contrarian did a really good job describing it back in 2008:

http://www.austincontrarian.com/aust...ed-densit.html

Basically, (without getting into the math) weighted density allows you to calculate what density the average resident of an area lives at. Standard density measures simply divide the total residents by the total area. This gives you a very land-centric figure ("The average number of people on each square mile.") Standard measures assume everyone lives at the same density, evenly spaced out across the land (which we all know is absurd). However, Weighted density puts the focus back on people by determining "the average number of people the average resident shares a square mile with." This is much better for describing how people actually experience a city, and is much more helpful for the kinds of discussions we are having here.

Here's the list the Austin Contrarian devised using Census 2000 data. It's much more in line with what most people think about US cities because it actually takes into account how many people live at each density:



Although completely unscientific, I think it would be interesting to take a census tract in each urbanized area that matches the weighted density for the urbanized area and find a picture of it. This would tell us (sort of) what type of neighborhood the average bostonian or angeleno or miamian lives in.

For those of you who are curious, the "density gradient" number is simply the weighted density divided by the standard density. What this (basically) tells you is how steep the gradient is in a city. Northeastern and Midwestern cities have a much larger number than Western and Southern cities, indicating that the central cities in the northeast and midwest are much more densely populated than the suburbs.

[dweebo2220]

Just for fun, I did it for L.A. (where I live, so I know how to get the census tract data). At 12,425 people per square mile, here's beautiful South Carthay (obviously all neighborhoods in LA don't look like this, but a lot do). It's comprised mostly of duplexes and triplexes, with a few larger apartments and some single family streets thrown in here and there.

[Capsule F]

Originally Posted by dweebo2220

If you are interested in these kinds of things, I suggest you research "weighted density," which is much more helpful for the kind of discussion happening here. The Austin contrarian did a really good job describing it back in 2008:

http://www.austincontrarian.com/aust...ed-densit.html

Basically, (without getting into the math) weighted density allows you to calculate what density the average resident of an area lives at. Standard density measures simply divide the total residents by the total area. This gives you a very land-centric figure ("The average number of people on each square mile.") Standard measures assume everyone lives at the same density, evenly spaced out across the land (which we all know is absurd). However, Weighted density puts the focus back on people by determining "the average number of people the average resident shares a census tract with." This is much better for describing how people actually experience a city, and is much more helpful for the kinds of discussions we are having here.

Here's the list the Austin Contrarian devised using Census 2000 data. It's much more in line with what most people think about US cities because it actually takes into account how many people live at each density:



Although completely unscientific, I think it would be interesting to take a census tract in each urbanized area that matches the weighted density for the urbanized area and find a picture of it. This would tell us (sort of) what type of neighborhood the average bostonian or angeleno or miamian lives in.

For those of you who are curious, the "density gradient" number is simply the weighted density divided by the standard density. What this (basically) tells you is how steep the gradient is in a city. Northeastern and Midwestern cities have a much larger number than Western and Southern cities, indicating that the central cities in the northeast and midwest are much more densely populated than the suburbs.

Pwnage.

The little chart I made earlier was supposed to illustrate this.

[dweebo2220]

Originally Posted by Capsule F

Pwnage.

The little chart I made earlier was supposed to illustrate this.

Haha don't feel bad: this is all emerging stuff--I'm getting my MA in urban planning and weighted density is nowhere near common practice.

[hammersklavier]

Originally Posted by austin242

Maybe that means you need alot of diffent types of parks near downtown you know Natural looking ones for those types of people Manicured for others and Playscapes for kids lots of variety. I would say austin has all that but we don't have any true manicured parks that I can think of inless the capitol grounds count, but I would like to think stuff like this helps so austin can become more urban.

The point is that Fairmount Park already has all of that. Yet it's not a central destination in the urban area the same way that e.g. Central Park is. I remember when I was a kid thinking it's because the Belmont Plateau and Wissahickon Gorge--and just about all the major park, really--was too far from Center City, but as I've grown older I've realized that you can't just have the parks--you have to spend the money to maintain it too (large parts of Fairmount Park are undermaintained).

[M II A II R II K]

HUD Announces the End of Urban Sprawl as We Know It, New Urbanists Feel Fine


May 21, 2010

By Greg Lindsay



Read More: http://www.fastcompany.com/1650533/t...ism-mainstream

"It's time the federal government stopped encouraging sprawl," Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Secretary Shaun Donovan declared this morning before the Congress for the New Urbanism. He'd announced moments before that the department would fund $3 billion worth of projects this year alone, and they'd henceforth use "location efficiency" (based on transportation access, residential density, and so on) to score grant applications. They'll also use the criteria of LEED-ND, the brainchild of CNU, the U.S. Green Building Council, and the National Resources Defense Council, Donovan said. It was launched last month to apply the green principles of LEED to urban development.

It could turn out to be the first step in a sea change about how the federal government approaches urbanism, which in turn could lead to the end of sprawl. Or, to paraphrase Nixon, we are all New Urbanists now. The implications go beyond funding for public housing. Last year, HUD joined the Department of Transportation and the Environmental Protection Agency in creating the Interagency Partnership for Sustainable Communities, an effort to think holistically about housing, transportation, and quality of life when awarding tens of billions of dollars in federal funds.

It is an article of faith among advocates for sustainable development that the notion Americans want sprawl is a pernicious myth. Sprawl isn't a function of market forces but the outcome of federal policies dating back to at least the 1950s. "For decades," Donovan said, "the government encouraged sprawl" with freeway construction and a "housing finance system that perpetuated the 'drive until you qualify' myth.

[M II A II R II K]

Centrally Planned Suburbia


Mar 11th, 2010

Read More: http://yglesias.thinkprogress.org/ar...d-suburbia.php

One great example of how much politics is about identity is the spectacle of libertarians like John Stossel doing things like defending sprawl. They note that “smart growth” environmentalists disparage sprawl and want to regulate what people can build and where, and they know that libertarians don’t like environmentalists, so they write in defense of sprawl. But as Austin Bramwell points out at The American Conservative sprawl is also central planning:

For the 101st time: sprawl — an umbrella term for the pattern of development seen virtually everywhere in the United States — is not caused by the free market. It is, rather, mandated by a vast and seemingly intractable network of government regulations, from zoning laws and building codes to street design regulations. If Stossel wants to expand Americans’ lifestyle choices, he should attack the very thing he was defending, namely, suburban sprawl.

[mhays]

Since zoning in most places has generally DEMANDED sprawl for generations, of course it's been a huge factor.

Many people love to live in sprawl. But housing prices suggest that a lot of other people are starved for walkable forms such as infill and new urbanism, assuming it's in places that don't scare them.

[M II A II R II K]

Cars and Sprawl: Chicken or Egg?


May 28, 2010



Read More: http://www.infozine.com/news/stories...iew/sid/41367/

A study featured in the summer issue of the Journal of the American Planning Association, and released in advance this week, aims to make decisions easier for those charged with designing and building cities that use less carbon in the future.

- "There has been more research on the effect of community design on the amount people drive, walk, and use transit than any other subject in urban planning,” said Reid Ewing, professor of city and metropolitan planning at the University of Utah, and co-author of the analysis. “We have attempted to make sense out of the varied findings, and arm planners and policy makers with numbers they can use to justify compact development, mixed use, interconnected streets, accessible transit, and other smart growth measures."

- Land-use diversity, for example a balance of jobs and housing within a neighborhood, is more important than density. While the focus of much of the earlier research, density of development is a secondary factor. Dense developments--of population or jobs--in the suburbs or exurbs are likely to have much larger carbon footprints than almost any development in the urban core of the metropolitan area.

[M II A II R II K]

Opposition grows to suburban-style design in Birmingham neighborhoods


May 27, 2010

By Michael Tomberlin



Read More: http://blog.al.com/spotnews/2010/05/...ameness_d.html

A warning to developers: You're not just witnessing a drive-by hit against drive-through windows. Officials say the uprising against the sameness of suburban design threatening the uniqueness of some of Birmingham's established downtown neighborhoods is not a temporary bristling that will die down. Instead, it's a fundamental shift they say has been a long time in the making as more young professionals and longtime residents recognize what's special about their community and are willing to unite and fight for it.

"The biggest impediment to better development in Alabama is the fear of saying 'no' to anything. When you're afraid to say 'no' to anything, you get the worst of everything," said Ed McMahon, senior resident fellow at Washington, D.C.-based Urban Land Institute. McMahon is one of the nation's leading experts on urban design and is also a Birmingham native. He has written numerous articles and case studies about how the cookie-cutter approach favored by national chains do harm to the special qualities of established communities and even end up hurting the stores or restaurants in the end.

"Here is the question the citizens of Birmingham need to ask: Do you want the character of Birmingham to shape the new development or do you want the new development to shape the character of Birmingham?" McMahon said. It turns out a growing number of residents and business owners in Five Points South, Lakeview, Forest Park, Highland Park and other historic Southside neighborhoods have been asking themselves that question and are opting for the former.

Opposition to Chick-fil-A's proposal to have a drive-through window at this old Ruby Tuesday location in Five Points South is an example of rising interest among some residents and business owners in protecting the uniqueness of their communities, some observers say. (The Birmingham News / Tamika Moore)