Ask just about any Angelino or Manhattanite which city is the densest. No argument; both would agree. New York is the concentrated world-capital city of soaring residential towers and abounding cement. Los Angeles is a suburbanoid, far-ranging sprawl of homes and trees. Guess what, both are wrong.
An interesting piece on changing urban density by Peter King in the San Francisco Chronicle cites new U.S. census data that contain big surprises. Greater Los Angeles, at 7,000 people per square mile, is far denser than the New York-Newark conurbanity. Which does not, in fact come in second, but only fifth in the 10 most densely populated urban areas in the U.S.
What’s Number Two? The Bay Area itself, the findings state, with 6,266 people per square mile. San Jose and the rest of the Silicon Valley come in third. Seven of the ten most populated are here in California—and Number 10 is Las Vegas-Henderson, often considered a quasi-California exurb.
How does this happen when one thinks of New York’s four principal boroughs as being encrusted with the mid-rise-and-up housing that most LA neighborhood associations muster out to resist? Well, part of it is perception. Much of the Queens, Brooklyn and even Bronx hinterlands have plenty of single-family housing, some of it quite old, that casual visitors rarely see.. And of course, despite the neighborhood jacquerie, Los Angeles is busting out in apartments and condos all over in its barely planned lurch toward densification.
But the tricky part of this classification has to do with its being determined by commuting and job patterns, rather than appearances of population concentration. That’s how Greater New York manages to be smaller than Los Angeles County but have twice the population and not, by the census’ reckoning, be as dense, overall. It’s because it has so many more empty places within.
Don’t believe me? Head due west out of Manhattan on I-80 and less than 30 miles into New Jersey, you are driving through Morris County’s fifth-growth woodlands and marshes with only intermittent signs of habitation. Do the equivalent eastbound on the 10 from downtown Los Angeles, and there’s an endless surrounding of franchised retailers, motels, auto dealerships, warehouse stores and so on. Go another 30 miles west on I-80 and you are in rural Pennsylvania. But take the 10 another 30 miles east and it’s the same human pattern, east, south or north, And behind all of these leagues of outlying retail purgatories, lie Henry James’ “multitudinous eruptions of domiciliary pasteboard” —residential development stacked on development, denser by the year. Filling the landscape from county to county.
It’s the incredible fast-moving uniformity, much of it a product of the last generation, that brings on the density from Camp Pendleton to the Antelope Valley. This coastal sprawl, King notes, is only hemmed in by state and national parklands and areas like the San Gabriel Mountains that are too steep to develop. And to the north, by the desert that intervenes, for now, before we get to the next California conurbanity, that of Bakersfield-Delano—Number Four in national urban density.
King says there is one hopeful note—a sign that increasing concentrations of population at the centers of the megacities may slow down their physical expansion. The only problem with that change, from my point of view, is that this tends to make the centers more expensive to live in. And, as it happens, more desirable places to visit.
Noteworthy and Upcoming
Wednesday, March 28—Coro Foundation: Coro’s Annual Crystal Eagle Awards Ceremony, one of which goes to Manatt, Phelps & Phillips partner and former Los Angeles City Charter Commission official George David Kieffer.
Time: 5:30 p.m. Registration, 7:30 p.m. Dinner.
Place: Omni Downtown Hotel, 251 E. Olive St, Los Angeles, California.
Thursday, March 29—The Beverly Hills Bar Association’s Elder Law Committee and Bet Tzedek Legal Services are planning to give a lunchtime overview of their new programs for serving elder and disabled adults. Estate planning, conservatorships, housing alternatives and so on are key elements here. Also, prevention of senior abuse.
The event registration starts at noon at the Beverly Hills Bar Association at 300 S. Beverly Drive #210.
Source: Who Is Dense?