[dionidium]

City-to-city comparisons suffer from all sorts of problems, not the least of which is that cities are defined according to their own historical, arbitrary borders that are practically meaningless when talking about actual issues.

Consider that NYC covers 302.6 sq/mi to SF's 46.69, which means that NYC isn't merely double the density, it's double the density over a much, much larger area.

This is why most serious comparisons are conducted at the level of the MSA (which would fold every one of the cities you're putting ahead of SF in density into a larger metro). Often, when laypeople compare cities, they're thinking about the MSA while quoting numbers they've found for cities-proper. That's why nobody in this conversation is thinking about Guttenberg, NY (and why mentioning it is almost a non sequitur).

[grardb]

I totally agree with you re: meaningless comparisons. However, I think the MSA comparison is pretty flawed as well.

For example, the Los Angeles metro area has a higher density than both NYC's and SF's (which is higher than NYC's), but it's obvious – to me at least – that in reality, considering only areas that most people would agree are remotely close to being in/near "the city," the density order of these three would be more like: 1) NYC 2) SF 3) LA.

But yeah, at the end of the day, I'm mostly being pedantic :)