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How dense is your city?
- epivosism 3y agoThis is really great. I want to review this for everywhere I've been, because the variation in how gov'ts do statistics is hiding so much of what's actually going on there.
- timcameron 3y agoAccompanying tweet thread: https://twitter.com/Jonathan_Nolan_/status/1764142998994948467 https://twitter.com/Jonathan_Nolan_/status/17641429989949484...
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- vinay427 3y agoFor those who liked this, I frequently come back to this visual which displays the distribution within a city in an arguably more visually appealing format: https://www.vox.com/2015/1/2/7480993/population-density-visualized https://www.vox.com/2015/1/2/7480993/population-density-visu... It helps explain the low-density feel that a city like London has compared to most large non-European cities. The original source is the third panel here: https://issuu.com/lsecities/docs/hongkong2011newspaper/9 https://issuu.com/lsecities/docs/hongkong2011newspaper/9
- Bellspringsteen 3y agoInteresting, NYC vs Tokyo. NYC is winning up until 20km. We need higher density queens, Brooklyn, Staten Island and Jersey. I don't think this takes into account water around cities. For NYC harbour south of downtown pull us down?
- pseudocomposer 3y agoIs higher density “winning?”
- infotainment 3y agoI'd say that density is generally a good thing, IMO. The more people live in a place, generally access to things is more convenient, commutes are shorter, etc. Low density generally means sprawl.
- nerdbert 3y agoBetter for the planet, better food and cultural options, shorter travel times for typical daily activities... in my book it definitely is.
- ars 3y agoAnd worse for the people who live there. I get anxiety just thinking of living in a dense city. Everyone I know who left a dense city never wants to go back - they talk like people who suffered from Stockholm syndrome and were now freed. And that doesn't even touch the economics: For the most part cities make money by services and not by physical items. Services are very lucrative, so on paper cities make tons of money. But they don't make anything people need to live. Virtually every single thing people buy in a city comes from outside the city. It's not a lifestyle that everyone can adopt. For the most part there's a balance, with some living in a city and some rural - but people should be extremely cautious about any kind of policy that can mess with that balance.
- fragmede 3y agoLawns are a Veblen good, like Louis Vuitton and Christian Dior handbags. That we don't see them as ostentatious the same way is a matter of culture. By all means, people should live where they want to live; urban, suburban, rural. But let's be honest about things.
- ars 3y agoLawns are a place where I play, or my kids play. Or where I go to just sit and enjoy nature. They are also decoration (flower bed for example) to make my surroundings more pleasant which helps my mental state. If your lawn is a Veblen good you are doing it wrong.
- hitonakawi 3y ago[flagged]
- clucas 3y agoIt takes a lot of resources to provide modern amenities like clean water, sanitary sewers, electricity, gas, telecom lines, roads, etc. Economies of scale make it cheaper to provide these things if people live closer together.
- smeej 3y agoI live where wells, septic systems, and propane delivery by truck are the norm. Even the highways in the state were originally privately built and are maintained largely by tolls. It seems like there would be a tipping range where it would be a toss-up whether it was more efficient to handle these things individually or in bulk, and I wonder how cities make the decision. Like, it would be wildly impractical to run pipes to every house at one density, but equally impractical to drill wells for every occupant at another density. I'm now curious how places decide when it's time to make the switch, and how they do it!
- infotainment 3y agoDensity == crime? There exist dense cities in the world that don't have a crime problem.
- Gigachad 3y agoBecause none of those things are linked. Most cities around the world have pretty extensive parklands, botanic gardens, and public transport links to nature reserves. Crime is area dependent, not density. And noise is mostly linked to car traffic, which is often reduced in higher density areas.
- UnFleshedOne 3y agoCar traffic might be reduced per capita in higher density areas, but all of it is concentrated and is right near all the people. Multiply by the sirens of ambulance and police that are constantly going somewhere. Compare to a dead-end suburb street which only 5-10 cars have any reason for driving at all.
- sasja 3y agoLove this! Fyi I noticed Kaohsiung was listed incorrectly as Kaohsiung (China) instead of Kaohsiung (Taiwan). Strange as Taipei was listed correctly as Taipei (Taiwan).
- forthwall 3y agoInteresting how San Francisco has almost the same density as NYC when you get to 2km. I wonder if this has to do with density of old neighborhoods surrounding fidi out-densitying most hoods in nyc
- fragmede 3y agoThe other interesting comparison is how similar SF and Stockholm are.
- user_7832 3y agoIt’s really helpful to have such a visualisation tool. I’ve felt Mumbai as being quite dense (partially because of the sea around it), and throwing a few “most dense cities” like Dhaka/Manila/Tokyo/Jakarta so far still results in Mumbai having the highest cumulative density values (made much more explicit when excluding large water bodies). Question/challenge: can anyone find any other city with a greater density? Dhaka is close but has a lower peak and tapers off faster.
- forthwall 3y agoThe Hong Kong core, makes sense because the HK core is super-dense
- user_7832 3y agoNice find! Yes, makes a lot of sense that HK is also going to be dense. And it’s islandic geography could explain why it drops off.
- seanmcdirmid 3y agoThe reason HK is not more dense in general is because much of the TAR is unlivable water and mountains that have to be worked around (lots of bridges and tunnels). Once you just count people on livable land, its density shoots up. It isn’t like other cities where density ever tapers off, it’s just clumps of apartment skyscrapers here and there.
- wolverine876 3y agoNote that the default graph is 'weighted density', to show you "how dense an area feels for the typical person who lives there." I didn't see where it says how it's calculated. You can change it to other measurements, including straight density.
- BenFranklin100 3y agoA question I’ve often wondered: how is density measured? Yes, I get it’s the total number of people per square mile, but how does work in detail? Do we count people if they only have their residential home there? If so, it means commercial buildings detracts toward this number. This tilts high density ratings towards residential areas like Somerville MA, which has no downtown to speak of, fewer public parks, and lacking in amenities. What it does have is lots and lots of run-down triple decker residential housing far as the eye can see. The city looks like a low-rent suburb rather than one of the densest cities in New England.
- mjamesaustin 3y agoI love this project, but I find some of the UI decisions baffling. For instance, as I add cities to my comparison, the colors of the cities I already have in the chart keep changing. Did anyone bother testing it, because that led to some serious confusion?
- sho 3y agoIt would be awesome to write/read the selected cities into/from the URL so selections could be shared easily.
- justoreply 3y agoI'm always getting this error message Disconnected from the server. Reload
- hughdbrown 3y agoAccording to this site, ever city in Canada is more densely populated than Toronto. It says 10 000 people live within 18 km of Toronto versus 1.5 million for Vancouver.
- sacado2 3y ago"0 people live within 5 km of Warsaw." (actual value is close to 2 millions). "80.000 people live within 0 km of Paris." (ditto, 2 millions live there). There are many other cities where the numbers are absurdly wrong. Don't take this tool too seriously, if at all.