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by rayiner
4495 days ago
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In the 2010 census, Chicago has 11 community areas above 20k/sqm, with 708k people in about 29 sqm (average density = 25k/sqm). Throw in West Town (18k/sqm) and the Loop (19k/sqm), and its 818k people in 35 sqm (average density = 23k/sqm). That's almost a San Francisco worth of dense neighborhoods both in population and area. And its not like SF is uniformly that dense. Parts remind me of the suburbs where my parents live in VA. Huge yards, etc. I don't disagree that San Francisco is somewhat more dense as a whole, but I still contend that the density angle is overweighted. I think city planning plays a huge role, not just in limiting densities (given the geography of the city, density should be more like Manhattan, not like Chicago) and also making less dense areas harder to access. There are huge tracts of residential neighborhoods in Chicago with back yards and bungalows, but they're often pretty close to an 'El' station or a METRA station. That takes a lot of pressure off housing prices downtown. Meanwhile, tons of land on the Peninsula less than 10 miles from downtown have no practical public transit besides one BART line. The McSuburbs of DC have better rail access, and that's sad. |
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