Earlier this month The Washington Post published an article called, There’s no such thing as a city that has run out of room.
And what it was really about was that when we say there’s no more room (I guess people are saying this), we are really saying that we just don’t want to allow anyone else to become our neighbor. Because the reality is that urban population densities vary widely around the world. So how can you really call a place full?
I’m not sure I feel this pain point as much as the author, but I always find population densities to be a fascinating topic. And accompanying the article was a tool – using data from Demographia – that allowed you to compare the population densities of various cities.
Here are are two scenarios I ran:
It’s important to keep in mind that these numbers are averages for the entire economically contiguous region. So it tells you nothing about the potential spikiness of certain areas. That’s why the population density of New York (which includes portions of New Jersey and Connecticut) probably seems low to you.
Still, it’s fascinating to see how extreme some cities – including some first world cities like Hong Kong – can be. Clearly many cities have a lot of room to become a lot more dense. And I think that would be a good thing.
The October issue of The New Yorker has an interesting piece called: Naked Cities – The death and life of urban America.
I find the article ends up rambling a bit, but I like the idea presented right at the beginning. The idea that cities can never really find equilibrium. They’re either dying, or victims of their own success.
Here’s that paragraph:
Cities can’t win. When they do well, people resent them as citadels of inequality; when they do badly, they are cesspools of hopelessness. In the seventies and eighties, the seemingly permanent urban crisis became the verdict that American civilization had passed on itself. Forty years later, cities mostly thrive, crime has been in vertiginous decline, the young cluster together in old neighborhoods, drinking more espresso per capita in Seattle than in Naples, while in San Francisco the demand for inner-city housing is so keen that one-bedroom apartments become scenes of civic conflict—and so big cities turn into hateful centers of self-absorbed privilege. We oscillate between “Taxi Driver” and “The Bonfire of the Vanities” without arriving at a stable picture of something in between.
I like this because there’s truth to it. But at the end of day, this is just one of the many challenges facing great city building.
To solve the problem of affordable housing you could just be a city in decline. But that’s not much fun. So the better option, however difficult it may be, is to figure out how to manage the negative externalities associated with winning.
Earlier this month The Washington Post published an article called, There’s no such thing as a city that has run out of room.
And what it was really about was that when we say there’s no more room (I guess people are saying this), we are really saying that we just don’t want to allow anyone else to become our neighbor. Because the reality is that urban population densities vary widely around the world. So how can you really call a place full?
I’m not sure I feel this pain point as much as the author, but I always find population densities to be a fascinating topic. And accompanying the article was a tool – using data from Demographia – that allowed you to compare the population densities of various cities.
Here are are two scenarios I ran:
It’s important to keep in mind that these numbers are averages for the entire economically contiguous region. So it tells you nothing about the potential spikiness of certain areas. That’s why the population density of New York (which includes portions of New Jersey and Connecticut) probably seems low to you.
Still, it’s fascinating to see how extreme some cities – including some first world cities like Hong Kong – can be. Clearly many cities have a lot of room to become a lot more dense. And I think that would be a good thing.
The October issue of The New Yorker has an interesting piece called: Naked Cities – The death and life of urban America.
I find the article ends up rambling a bit, but I like the idea presented right at the beginning. The idea that cities can never really find equilibrium. They’re either dying, or victims of their own success.
Here’s that paragraph:
Cities can’t win. When they do well, people resent them as citadels of inequality; when they do badly, they are cesspools of hopelessness. In the seventies and eighties, the seemingly permanent urban crisis became the verdict that American civilization had passed on itself. Forty years later, cities mostly thrive, crime has been in vertiginous decline, the young cluster together in old neighborhoods, drinking more espresso per capita in Seattle than in Naples, while in San Francisco the demand for inner-city housing is so keen that one-bedroom apartments become scenes of civic conflict—and so big cities turn into hateful centers of self-absorbed privilege. We oscillate between “Taxi Driver” and “The Bonfire of the Vanities” without arriving at a stable picture of something in between.
I like this because there’s truth to it. But at the end of day, this is just one of the many challenges facing great city building.
To solve the problem of affordable housing you could just be a city in decline. But that’s not much fun. So the better option, however difficult it may be, is to figure out how to manage the negative externalities associated with winning.
I thought this was an awesome idea, so I tweeted out the photo. Then Daniel Kay Hertz – who is a Senior Fellow at City Observatory and from Chicago – asked me: “Is there a Toronto equivalent?”
And that got me thinking.
Montreal has smoked meat, bagels, and poutine. Philly has the cheese steak. Chicago has deep dish pizza. Quebec City has maple sugar and tourtiere (a kind of meat pie). New Orleans has po’boy sandwiches. Boston has clam chowder. Austin has tacos. Seattle has crab. And the list goes on.
But what is the quintessentially Toronto dish? Asian fusion food? Peameal bacon sandwiches from the St. Lawrence Market? I really don’t know. So I think we should decide on one right now. Think of it as an exercise in city branding.
Leave your suggestion in the comments below and we’ll have a vote.
I thought this was an awesome idea, so I tweeted out the photo. Then Daniel Kay Hertz – who is a Senior Fellow at City Observatory and from Chicago – asked me: “Is there a Toronto equivalent?”
And that got me thinking.
Montreal has smoked meat, bagels, and poutine. Philly has the cheese steak. Chicago has deep dish pizza. Quebec City has maple sugar and tourtiere (a kind of meat pie). New Orleans has po’boy sandwiches. Boston has clam chowder. Austin has tacos. Seattle has crab. And the list goes on.
But what is the quintessentially Toronto dish? Asian fusion food? Peameal bacon sandwiches from the St. Lawrence Market? I really don’t know. So I think we should decide on one right now. Think of it as an exercise in city branding.
Leave your suggestion in the comments below and we’ll have a vote.
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