so me and my math-y friend who's into this were talking about it and actually decided to ~crunch the numbers~...sorta interesting cause afaik nobody's done weighted density for paris. didn't just do this to prove myself right, we're into this and were curious. (fwiw pretty sure he thought paris would win.)
again, weighted density = density experienced by average resident. regular density = density experienced by average tract of land (which thus gives equal weight to the center of paris and a farm 25 miles away)
instead of census tracts, we used the 1280 communes and 20 arrondissements that make up the greater paris region, got the individual density for each, multiplied that by (% of total region population) and did a sum of those:
http://www.intercarto.com/cms/produits/1473/136/carte-de-l-ile-de-france-en-communes.html
^1300 communes/arrondissements
result:
3 state new york metro area - 36,369 /mi^2paris metro area (ile de france) - 25,323 /mi^2
others, for reference:5 County SF Bay Area - 11,956 /mi^211 County SF Bay Area - 10,188 /mi^25 County LA - 10,200 /mi^2LA+OC - 12,208/mi^2.manhattan - 113,534/mi^2 bronx - 69,164/mi^2brooklyn - 57,181 /mi^2queens - 44,446/mi^2SI - 13,000 /mi^2
basically ile de france (paris and the 7 departments that surround it) is 'more dense' than the NYC metro area in the same way that LA is more dense than NYC - the total built up area is more evenly distributed. looking at the density numbers like that isn't completely pointless - it tells you something about the sprawl/land-use. but it doesn't really tell you anything about what it's like there, which is why 'LA is the densest city in america seems like an absurdist statement'. the average 'francilien' (resident of the paris metropolitan area) lives in a considerably less dense environment than the average NYC resident. and paris is 'more dense' in the city-boundary calculation (which is pretty pointless w/ paris...in 2011 the city's political boundary doesn't even cover the central business district. that was my only real point at the start of this argument.)
but as a whole the 'average citizen' lives in an area less dense than the average metro new yorker (but way, way denser than the average bay area resident.) the experienced density gap is similar to the gap between brooklyn and queens.
paris' banlieue is a lot more complicated than a lot of people (esp. french people) give it credit for - includes super dense urban regions, castles, la haine-style gigantic housing projects, boring american sprawl, tiny medieval towns, super rural areas, etc...so there are limits to comparing it to LA sprawl. it's crazy dense. way more dense than any region in the united states.
except nyc.
― iatee, Monday, 24 January 2011 16:14 (thirteen years ago) link
er, http://www.intercarto.com/produits_image/image_1473_image_idf-communes.jpg
― iatee, Monday, 24 January 2011 16:15 (thirteen years ago) link
anyway http://thegurglingcod.typepad.com/thegurglingcod/images/2008/02/12/the_more_you_know2.jpg
― iatee, Monday, 24 January 2011 16:17 (thirteen years ago) link
'LA is the densest city in america seems like an absurdist statement'. should be 'LA is the densest city in america' seems like an absurdist statement.
― iatee, Monday, 24 January 2011 16:18 (thirteen years ago) link
londoners:
w/r/t greater london, what's the smallest unit for which area + population data would exist? is there a division smaller than borough?
― iatee, Monday, 24 January 2011 16:27 (thirteen years ago) link
yeah, there are also "wards", about a dozen per borough.
― joe, Monday, 24 January 2011 16:43 (thirteen years ago) link
greater london data super easy to find and use wtg uk
20569.71061 in miles
― iatee, Monday, 24 January 2011 17:15 (thirteen years ago) link
iatee or other mass transit bros, what is your opinion of rapid bus transit as an alternative to rail? My backward ass burg is getting one of these next year and I'm wondering if this is a worthy venture to be cheerleading on a bigger scale.
― Temple Grindin (m bison), Monday, 31 January 2011 01:58 (thirteen years ago) link
iatee is better on this stuff than i am but one of the nice things about bus transit is that it doesnt require a lot of expensive new infrastructure
― max, Monday, 31 January 2011 02:33 (thirteen years ago) link
(though it obv does require some new infrastructure)
― max, Monday, 31 January 2011 02:34 (thirteen years ago) link
generally it's a worthy venture to be cheerleading...but it depends on the cost and the location and the ridership projections etc. if it's a 'good project' then it's worth cheerleading for - and but that depends on the specifics, like where the stops will be, what kind of BRT it is (whether there will be timed lights, prepaid fares, dedicated bus lane etc.) a super well-planned rapid bus system is better than a light-rail system w/ stops in the middle of nowhere. but it's a bummer to get BRT as a light-rail consolation prize. still, dedicated bus lanes can be converted to light-rail in the future (is what people say.)
there's definitely a psychological comfort margin for lots of people w/r/t buses vs. trains and building actual transit infrastructure is always better than painting a bus but in the end it's all in the details.
― iatee, Monday, 31 January 2011 02:45 (thirteen years ago) link
m bise is your burg getting something like this
http://www.geekosystem.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/china-giant-bus-550x205.jpg
― based god kwassa kwassa (dayo), Monday, 31 January 2011 02:47 (thirteen years ago) link
haha I said 'and but'
― iatee, Monday, 31 January 2011 02:48 (thirteen years ago) link
I think I was trying to decide which one to go w/
http://www.viabrt.net/Content/BRTMain.aspx
def the best corridor in sa to try it on...connects our biggest public university, downtown, and medical center
― Temple Grindin (m bison), Monday, 31 January 2011 03:03 (thirteen years ago) link
They put a BRT in on the most traveled non-freeway corridor in my suburban county with dedicated lanes for about half the length, prioritized signals, fares paid at station, stops every mile or so, and 10-minute headways. It's great. King County, the next county over and home of Seattle, is building BRT in several corridors that by all accounts is laughable compared to the one in my county. But they are getting light rail online that will take another 15 years to reach up here so I'm still envious.
― smanging pumpkins (The Reverend), Monday, 31 January 2011 03:14 (thirteen years ago) link
yeah tbh light-rail would be nice (and would prob improve your life substantially) until enough people *want* light-rail in san antonio and until the city is ready to develop around it, it would likely be really underperforming like dallas'. I don't know a lot about san antonio but transit people seem to think that the brt route is good. xp
― iatee, Monday, 31 January 2011 03:17 (thirteen years ago) link
light rail is boss imo, I love spending an afternoon just riding the light rail, looking out the window and thinking baout things
http://www.mtr.com.hk/images/LR_routemap.jpg
― based god kwassa kwassa (dayo), Monday, 31 January 2011 03:19 (thirteen years ago) link
that's a really pretty map
― iatee, Monday, 31 January 2011 03:20 (thirteen years ago) link
yah if you go to the original image its like 2400 pix long, it's greeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaattttttt
― based god kwassa kwassa (dayo), Monday, 31 January 2011 03:21 (thirteen years ago) link
light rail is boss imo
otm
― smanging pumpkins (The Reverend), Monday, 31 January 2011 03:22 (thirteen years ago) link
I think it's interesting that the people on this thread are all 'men of a certain age'...sometimes I wonder if our generation really is a bit different or whether I just live in a bubble.
― iatee, Monday, 31 January 2011 03:57 (thirteen years ago) link
def a bubble
― Temple Grindin (m bison), Monday, 31 January 2011 03:58 (thirteen years ago) link
nah but theres def a generational embrace of transit among young folx in urban enclaves and shit.
― Temple Grindin (m bison), Monday, 31 January 2011 04:01 (thirteen years ago) link
makes it easier to ride around on our fixies and shit
― based god kwassa kwassa (dayo), Monday, 31 January 2011 04:05 (thirteen years ago) link
BRT is actually just a poor substitute for fixie rapid transit w/ dedicated fixie lanes
― iatee, Monday, 31 January 2011 04:07 (thirteen years ago) link
not a big hipster community in sa, fixie rapid transit may be a fair compromise
― Temple Grindin (m bison), Monday, 31 January 2011 04:08 (thirteen years ago) link
fixie rapid transit has been known to increase hipster density but it depends on the hipster zoning laws
― iatee, Monday, 31 January 2011 04:09 (thirteen years ago) link
whiney to thread
― Temple Grindin (m bison), Monday, 31 January 2011 04:12 (thirteen years ago) link
re: buses vs rail
http://www.humantransit.org/2011/02/sorting-out-rail-bus-differences.html
― iatee, Friday, 11 February 2011 16:03 (thirteen years ago) link
glaeser can kinda be a clown but it seems like he's becoming the public face of this type of thinking:
http://portlandtransport.com/archives/2011/02/on_market_urban.htmlhttp://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1969/12/how-skyscrapers-can-save-the-city/8387/1/#/
― iatee, Wednesday, 16 February 2011 16:37 (thirteen years ago) link
I don't recommend his book, I couldn't get past a few chapters. article is okay.
― iatee, Wednesday, 16 February 2011 16:39 (thirteen years ago) link
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/23/business/economy/23housing.html?hp
Sales of new single-family homes in February were down more than 80 percent from the 2005 peak, far exceeding the 28 percent drop in existing home sales. New single-family sales are now lower than at any point since the data was first collected in 1963, when the nation had 120 million fewer residents.
― iatee, Monday, 25 April 2011 00:30 (thirteen years ago) link
But people are still buying houses, even houses in the suburbs -- it's just that there's so much extra stock that there's no need to buy NEW houses.
― Guayaquil (eephus!), Monday, 25 April 2011 01:08 (thirteen years ago) link
also maybe people's taste has gotten better and they've collectively admitted that American architecture has gone completely to shit until you get to ridiculously unaffordable prices, where it's only gone 75% to shit
― five gone cats from Boston (underrated aerosmith bootlegs I have owned), Monday, 25 April 2011 01:23 (thirteen years ago) link
My architect friends have said something to the effect that they wouldn't live in many houses built after 1970.
― mh, Monday, 25 April 2011 01:38 (thirteen years ago) link
yeah people's taste hasn't gotten better, they're just buying shit built in 2005 instead of 2011. but at the very least the construction spree (which lasted half a century!) is on its last legs.
pretty amazing how much the american landscape can change in two decades:
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_payZfX5rZ08/SZT8yMcoJJI/AAAAAAAAADA/gOrL2s-FVus/s1600-h/nat-geo-sprawl-map-2001.jpg
(looking for a graph 2001-2011)
― iatee, Monday, 25 April 2011 02:09 (thirteen years ago) link
er http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_payZfX5rZ08/SZT8yMcoJJI/AAAAAAAAADA/gOrL2s-FVus/s1600-h/nat-geo-sprawl-map-2001.jpg
really digging my new suburban house
― velko, Monday, 25 April 2011 02:50 (thirteen years ago) link
piedmont sprawl on that map is kind of amazing.
― circles, Monday, 25 April 2011 03:33 (thirteen years ago) link
cant believe how much shit iatee was getting in this thread 10 mo. ago. him & goole & laurel otm
― geeks, dweebs, nerds & lames (D-40), Monday, 25 April 2011 04:46 (thirteen years ago) link
hahaha u crazy.
― The Band Perry is the drummer for Gay Dad (jjjusten), Monday, 25 April 2011 05:37 (thirteen years ago) link
like i am generally super down w/all of the people you mentioned, but that back and forth 10 months ago was so stupid strawmen level suburbs full of cakeeating treefuckers/suburbs full of true grit community holdthereowns that i cant even look back at it without going ugggghhhhh
― The Band Perry is the drummer for Gay Dad (jjjusten), Monday, 25 April 2011 05:47 (thirteen years ago) link
note - i am guilty as well obv
― The Band Perry is the drummer for Gay Dad (jjjusten), Monday, 25 April 2011 05:55 (thirteen years ago) link
excited to have this argument again but iatee and goole and laurel werent making cultural arguments about cake or whatever!
― ban drake (the rapper) (max), Monday, 25 April 2011 12:33 (thirteen years ago) link
yeah iirc I tried to avoid making cultural and/or racial arguments and mostly just repeated 'this is economically and environmentally unsustainable and it's not as 'free market' as one might think, the government has always promoted it through various subsidies/laws/taxes' - I don't think people in cities are all cultured motherfuckers, in fact I have good evidence for that not being true. I think people remember me saying things that they think I secretly must believe.
― iatee, Monday, 25 April 2011 12:53 (thirteen years ago) link
I mean I am actually eating cake *right now*
― iatee, Monday, 25 April 2011 12:56 (thirteen years ago) link
I must have had ahold of something extremely dank and sticky to have resisted the urge to argue with iatee about this shit back then
dank bag RIP
― five gone cats from Boston (underrated aerosmith bootlegs I have owned), Monday, 25 April 2011 13:21 (thirteen years ago) link
haha you wanted to argue that suburbs are sustainable?
― ban drake (the rapper) (max), Monday, 25 April 2011 13:26 (thirteen years ago) link
lol no they're catastrophic obv it's just that I'm generally suspicious of the crusading-against-the-suburbs mindset because it often dovetails with people who talk about "flyover states" & generally hold weird my-class-has-shit-figure-out opinions that I find odious
― five gone cats from Boston (underrated aerosmith bootlegs I have owned), Monday, 25 April 2011 13:29 (thirteen years ago) link