Is Boston's place in the "big urban" top 5 secured?

[jpdivola]

It is generally considered than NYC, Chi, SF, Philly and Boston are the top 5 most traditionally urban cities in the US. They are the only cities that really offer the complete packaged: buzzy big cities downtowns with dense residential neighborhoods. Subways, Chinatowns, Skyscrapers, shopping streets, active public squares, dense built environments, etc.

However, Boston has always been the smallest of the 5. NYC and Chicago are so huge there status is forever assured. Boston has been closer to the Philly and SF. But, it doesn't quiet have the hyper-density of SF's core or the sustained urbanism of Philly. Outside the top 5, DC and Seattle seem to be closing in. DC has been nipping a Boston's heels. Traditionally held back by it's sterile downtown and relative lack of density, the city is rapidly remaking itself via a massive residential boom and bringing retail and restaurants back to the city core. Seattle is further behind, but has also taken a decidedly urban turn, with the city in full on Vancouverization model. The city has vast swaths of central land zoned for 440 footers that when completed will be one of the most vibrant areas in the county.

I can't help but wonder if some of the angst we see about height on this forum has less to do with the merits of the individual project and more about this generally sense of Boston's standing in the urban order. Boston is obviously growing and improving in absolute terms, but I wonder if there is some underlying angst about how the city is doing in relative terms when it comes to capturing the "urban imagination?" Maybe we are moving away from having only a handful of "true American big cities" into a messier world where the pecking order isn't a clear cut.

 

[bigeman312]

LA is definitely in the conversation. Over the past 20 years, Los Angeles has definitely been moving the right direction. A lot of expansion of public transportation. There is also a lot in the way of "skyscrapers, shopping streets, active public square, dense built environments, etc." Or at least way more than perceived. I know Boston is certainly more traditionally urban, on average. But LA's many neighborhoods that are traditionally urban, and its size gives it an advantage.

 

[Shepard]

Interesting topic.

I don't think there's ever really a "pecking order." I have to imagine that every city faces some anxiety about "competitor cities" which play at or near their own level. In New York, the anxiety is about other global financial centers like London, Tokyo, Hong Kong, or other domestic powerhouse cities like Chicago and LA. And yes, even in New York there is a certain degree of Boston-directed anxiety beyond the traditional sports rivalry - look what just happened with GE. (And, recall the city's proposal to build a technology university on Roosevelt Island to rival MIT?)

It's obviously a matter of opinion, but I would argue that Boston's closest "rival" is San Francisco. Both are old port cities, both are urban and dense, both are booming. Both succeed on their geographical place within a broader region (Boston to the Northeast Megalopolis, SF to Silicon Valley). Both are demographically young, entrepreneurial cities. Most importantly, both are fully engaged in the knowledge economy. For a while it looked like SF/Silicon Valley had roundly defeated Boston/Route 128 - the microcomputer lost out to the personal computer, and Google, Facebook and all these other Web 2.0 startups followed that action. But times are changing. Industrial internet - the next technology wave - is Boston's game to lose, as recognized by GE.

The cities are similar sizes. Boston is rapidly growing, changing, evolving - while SF becomes more and more a caricature of itself in some respects. That's not to put down SF in any way.

DC is comparable to Boston, but not really a rival. Washington's booms and busts go in and out with the federal budget. That's how it's always been. It's a completely different city with a very different type of ecosystem.

Philly is not comparable to Boston economically. That may also be a point of personal opinion, but I've never felt Philly was much beyond a scaled-up Baltimore.

I know your point was about "urbanism." I don't think there's really a rivalry about this, or a pecking order. Many US cities are densifying their cores. That's a good thing all around.

 

[Arlington]

Boston is one of the 11 cities in the top 5 ;-) Unfortunately, the breakpoint in the tiers of big cities doesn't correspond to the number of finger on your hand. The rules for breakpoints are arbitrary (personal, even) and I don't think we should game them--either criteria or cutoff--just to engineer a win for Boston.

Ethnicity Shouldn't Matter. Will you accept that "having a Chinatown"(while ruling LA in) unfairly rules out places like Miami, Houston, and Dallas, which happen to have more recent immigrants from Cuba, Haiti, Vietnam, and Mexico/LatAm. I'd say the criterion is "has identifiable/cohesive non-European immigrant enclaves"

Size Matters. "The core" is important and vibrant because of whom it serves. Charleston and New Orleans have vibrant dense cores but don't stack up because their metros are small. Just because New York annexed its 4 surrounding counties and Boston didn't, I'd say you have to count total MSA population, and I'd draw the line for "the top" at #11, San Francisco (leaving Phoenix the best of the rest)

Clearly there's a Big Urban 2 (NYC, Chi) but you have to work too hard, mentally, to carefully draw the definition keep LA out of contention on a list of 5, and I'd say that means that you have to resign yourself to LA rounding out the Big Urban 3, especially now that they're throwing down subway and light rail everywhere and already had a dense cosmopolitan core.

After the Big 3, there are 8 other cities that, depending on how you score them, can array themselves to round out the "top"

The pre-Auto 4: The first 4 were "old" dominant metropolitan centers in 1900. DC is an edge case because Air Conditioning was fairly essential to getting away from the Summer Recess.
1) Philly...except that city gov is so sick and it is so unhip
2) Boston...except that it is small and hub of a shrinking region (NE)
3) SF...whose region is almost more important than its capital
4) DC...whose core is incredibly vibrant/urban and now has more gentrification in rowhouse neighborhoods than Boston does.

If the core works, I don't think cars/suburbs around should disqualify
And then, if you relax your overall density requirements (these are supposed to be "American", not just "Euro-wannabe" cities, yes?) there are huge regions that rely on both Car and A/C that have a dense core (and happen to have Mexican, Hatian, Vietnamese, or Cubans instead of a Chinatown)
1) Houston (MSA is bigger than Philly MSA) has light rail & Viet/Latinos
2) Dallas (MSA is bigger than Philly MSA) has subway
3) Miami (MSA is bigger than Atlanta) Caribbean's financial capital has L due to high water table
4) Atlanta, which, despite its cars, has taller buildings than Boston and has hosted an Olympics.

Atlanta MSA is ~20% bigger than Boston or San Francisco. If size or building heights is a criteria, you can't rule Atlanta out (1 at 1000'+ 2 in 800's, 2 in 700's, 6 in 600's)

 

[datadyne007]

I'd say this disqualifies Atlanta from any serious conversation about them being a real city and solidifies Boston's position on the list:

 

[bigeman312]

Arlington: is there a reason why you use MSA and not Urban Area? Urban Area pop would be a far more applicable metric for this scenario. For urban pop, here is the top 15 (there is a natural drop-off after 15):

1. New York
2. Los Angeles
3. Chicago
4. Miami
5. Philadelphia
6. Dallas
7. Houston
8. Washington
9. Atlanta
10. Boston
11. Detroit
12. Phoenix
13. San Francisco
14. Seattle
15. San Diego

 

[Arlington]

I'd say [ATLs plunge in transit] disqualifies Atlanta from any serious conversation about them being a real city and solidifies Boston's position on the list:

DC's subway is failing, driving down linked transit trips, but it has had a corresponding explosion in people who've moved to the core so they can bike or walk to work. There's a lot happening in that chart. I agree Boston looks great on that score, but I don't think it quite sweeps the other contenders off the table (even if it sweeps Atlanta off)

ARL & ALX & Arlington and Alexandria (the "rest of the 10mile square"), you can ignore the fringe counties when considering mode in the core (Montgomery, Prince George's, Fairfax, Prince William, Loudon, Frederick, Charles)

 

[jpdivola]

Boston is one of the 11 cities in the top 5 ;-) Unfortunately, the breakpoint in the tiers of big cities doesn't correspond to the number of finger on your hand. The rules for breakpoints are arbitrary (personal, even) and I don't think we should game them--either criteria or cutoff--just to engineer a win for Boston.

Ethnicity Shouldn't Matter. Will you accept that "having a Chinatown"(while ruling LA in) unfairly rules out places like Miami, Houston, and Dallas, which happen to have more recent immigrants from Cuba, Haiti, Vietnam, and Mexico/LatAm. I'd say the criterion is "has identifiable/cohesive non-European immigrant enclaves"

Size Matters. "The core" is important and vibrant because of whom it serves. Charleston and New Orleans have vibrant dense cores but don't stack up because their metros are small. Just because New York annexed its 4 surrounding counties and Boston didn't, I'd say you have to count total MSA population, and I'd draw the line for "the top" at #11, San Francisco (leaving Phoenix the best of the rest)

Clearly there's a Big Urban 2 (NYC, Chi) but you have to work too hard, mentally, to carefully draw the definition keep LA out of contention on a list of 5, and I'd say that means that you have to resign yourself to LA rounding out the Big Urban 3, especially now that they're throwing down subway and light rail everywhere and already had a dense cosmopolitan core.

After the Big 3, there are 8 other cities that, depending on how you score them, can array themselves to round out the "top"

The pre-Auto 4: The first 4 were "old" dominant metropolitan centers in 1900. DC is an edge case because Air Conditioning was fairly essential to getting away from the Summer Recess.
1) Philly...except that city gov is so sick and it is so unhip
2) Boston...except that it is small and hub of a shrinking region (NE)
3) SF...whose region is almost more important than its capital
4) DC...whose core is incredibly vibrant/urban and now has more gentrification in rowhouse neighborhoods than Boston does.

If the core works, I don't think cars/suburbs around should disqualify
And then, if you relax your overall density requirements (these are supposed to be "American", not just "Euro-wannabe" cities, yes?) there are huge regions that rely on both Car and A/C that have a dense core (and happen to have Mexican, Hatian, Vietnamese, or Cubans instead of a Chinatown)
1) Houston (MSA is bigger than Philly MSA) has light rail & Viet/Latinos
2) Dallas (MSA is bigger than Philly MSA) has subway
3) Miami (MSA is bigger than Atlanta) Caribbean's financial capital has L due to high water table
4) Atlanta, which, despite its cars, has taller buildings than Boston and has hosted an Olympics.

Atlanta MSA is ~20% bigger than Boston or San Francisco. If size or building heights is a criteria, you can't rule Atlanta out (1 at 1000'+ 2 in 800's, 2 in 700's, 6 in 600's)

When I say Top 5, I'm talking more qualitatively. Not so much based on population or GDP. Atl and Hou are economic and social powerhouses, no doubt about it. But, they just don't give you the classic walkable urban city feel. LA is a bit of wild card. It is huge and has lots of walkable urban districts, but it just doesn't function like a traditional "big city built environment." Even people I know who love it say you can't go to LA expecting a Chi/SF/Bos style experience where most of the activity is centered in the core.

New Orleans and Charleston have nice tourist districts, but aren't major cities. No big skylines, no big city transit network, no big city shopping etc.

 

[Arlington]

Arlington: is there a reason why you use MSA and not Urban Area? Urban Area pop would be a far more applicable metric for this scenario.

Its mostly a matter of indifference: the top 10 are the same either way, just slightly shuffled. Chosing MSA lets San Francisco be #11 (we like San Francisco ;-) while choosing Urban Area puts Detroit at #11 (I'll admit to not wanting Detroit in my choice set because of sucky transit)

 

[Arlington]

When I say Top 5, I'm talking more qualitatively.

Then I'd say it is too subjective to ever get agreement on "THE big urban top 5" and you'll have to content yourself with "MY big urban top 5" (which might win just on ArchBoston from familiarity and liking our own decisions and not some more generalizable criteria)

 

[jpdivola]

Fair enough, this is somewhat subjective. But, there is a clear clustering of downtown office space, downtown shopping, transit usage and city pop density around 5 or 6 (depending on DC).

I generally see these same 4 or 5 cities compared in various "which is the most urban city in the US after NYC" urbanist discussions.

This is one example of the type of comments:
"IMO Philadelphia, Chicago, New York, Boston and San Francisco are the most urbane US cities with extremely vibrant downtowns, density, variety and great rail transit. Philadelphia is a mystery to so many because New York City is only 70 miles away."
http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?t=690122

 

[shawn]

We endlessly circle-jerk this question at SSP. Not to present the consensus there as the be-all-end-all of American urbanity, but the tiers we've generally agreed on:

Tier 1: NYC, LA, Chicago
Tier 1A: San Francisco, Boston, DC, Philly

Tier 2: Houston, Dallas, Seattle, Atlanta, Miami, Detroit

Tier 3: Minneapolis, Cleveland, Denver, Portland, San Diego, St Louis, Pittsburgh, Phoenix, Baltimore

Tier 4: Orlando, Tampa, Charlotte, Sacramento, Kansas City, Salt Lake City, Cincinnati, Indianapolis, Milwaukee, Hartford, Las Vegas, Oklahoma City, etc. (the rest of the metros with 1 million or more people)

We tend to go by CSA GDP (Boston's CSA is a whole San Diego's worth bigger than Philly's in terms of GDP, believe it or not), a bucket of performance indicators such as available VC, transit levels (usage rates, sizes, funding), prominent cultural institutions, population density, other stuff only demography nerds like me get off to.

Boston is doing just fine. Second largest concentration of venture capital in the Western Hemisphere after the Bay Area. A knowledge economy and university / hospital system other metros will literally never be able to compete with. A transit system which, in spite of how locals complain, is either the third or fourth best system in the country. The T runs laps around BART and Muni, and my god, have any of you tried to ride SEPTA? Only NYC, DC, and Chicago have systems equal to or better than Boston's. We're doing fine!

 

[Justin7]

Philly is not comparable to Boston economically. That may also be a point of personal opinion, but I've never felt Philly was much beyond a scaled-up Baltimore.

You need to spend more time in Philadelphia, or at least get a book or something.

 

[393b40]

It's obviously a matter of opinion, but I would argue that Boston's closest "rival" is San Francisco. Both are old port cities, both are urban and dense, both are booming. Both succeed on their geographical place within a broader region (Boston to the Northeast Megalopolis, SF to Silicon Valley). Both are demographically young, entrepreneurial cities. Most importantly, both are fully engaged in the knowledge economy. For a while it looked like SF/Silicon Valley had roundly defeated Boston/Route 128 - the microcomputer lost out to the personal computer, and Google, Facebook and all these other Web 2.0 startups followed that action. But times are changing. Industrial internet - the next technology wave - is Boston's game to lose, as recognized by GE.

This seems pretty accurate. I think our economy is a hell of a lot more diversified than SF though.

 

[bigeman312]

I'll play devil's advocate. I believe Philly deserves to be here at least as much as Boston.

Philly's urban core is just as "urban" as Boston's, and at least as larg. That is true regardless of whether you are considering only the very urban (Mass Ave and in versus South Street to 676) or moderately urban (Roxbury to East Boston versus Walnut Hill to Fishtown) or kind of urban (Mattapan to Cambridge versus Manayunk to South Philadelphia)

 

[jpdivola]

I'll play devil's advocate. I believe Philly deserves to be here at least as much as Boston.

Philly's urban core is just as "urban" as Boston's, and at least as larg. That is true regardless of whether you are considering only the very urban (Mass Ave and in versus South Street to 676) or moderately urban (Roxbury to East Boston versus Walnut Hill to Fishtown) or kind of urban (Mattapan to Cambridge versus Manayunk to South Philadelphia)

Yeah, that is what I'm getting at. More in terms of function and built environment than GDP or whatnot. I think Boston's relative wealth (or relative lack of deprivation) has helped in so far as it contributes to safer streets, more retail and better kept architecture and generally higher demand.

Philly's urban zone extends a lot further than Boston, but historically Boston has punched above its weight given that it didn't see the same level of disinvestment in it's core. But, Philly has been slowly chanding. It's seeing some "great inversion" type movement back into the city center, with a mini-boom in residential and commercial high rises. The rowhouse neighborhoods are slowly getting rehabs/infill as they transition from "blue collar rust belt" vibe to "Brooklyn 2.0" hipster types.

 

[Arlington]

We endlessly circle-jerk this question at SSP. Not to present the consensus there as the be-all-end-all of American urbanity, but the tiers we've generally agreed on:

Tier 1: NYC, LA, Chicago
Tier 1A: San Francisco, Boston, DC, Philly
Tier 2: Houston, Dallas, Seattle, Atlanta, Miami, Detroit
Tier 3: Minneapolis, Cleveland, Denver, Portland, San Diego, St Louis, Pittsburgh, Phoenix, Baltimore
Tier 4: Orlando, Tampa, Charlotte, Sacramento, Kansas City, Salt Lake City, Cincinnati, Indianapolis, Milwaukee, Hartford, Las Vegas, Oklahoma City, etc. (the rest of the metros with 1 million or more people)

I'd go with this if you told me I needed an immediate answer. It somewhat reflects that the older Northeast Corridor cities and SF have had longer to pile up their wealth/assets/culture/architecture, which is a fact even if it demotes Houston, Dallas and Atlanta.

The crazy thing is that in GDP the Tier1A/2 is:
4) Houston
5) Dallas
6) DC
7) San Fran
8) Philly (lots of people, lower socio-economic per capita)
9) Boston (few richer more-educated people)

 

[DZH22]

But, Philly has been slowly chanding. It's seeing some "great inversion" type movement back into the city center, with a mini-boom in residential and commercial high rises. ......

I wouldn't call Philly's boom mini. They are outbuilding Boston in both height and quantity. Right now Comcast is building its second tower there, which is (maybe) over halfway up and will be over 1100' high! They also have the FMC 730' mixed use tower over halfway up. Plans for another 700'+ at Cira Center, and an upcoming wave of buildings are in prep work that will all be close to 600'. (rivaling the top of Boston's plateau buildings before MT was built) They also have the same steady stream of shorter infill, even more than we have going here.

As big as Boston's current boom is, it's really just "keeping up with the Joneses" as Philadelphia, San Francisco, Seattle, and a few others continue to outpace us on the construction front.

 

[shawn]

I'd go with this if you told me I needed an immediate answer. It somewhat reflects that the older Northeast Corridor cities and SF have had longer to pile up their wealth/assets/culture/architecture, which is a fact even if it demotes Houston, Dallas and Atlanta.

The crazy thing is that in GDP the Tier1A/2 is:
4) Houston
5) Dallas
6) DC
7) San Fran
8) Philly (lots of people, lower socio-economic per capita)
9) Boston (few richer more-educated people)

Glad you stumbled on that GDP list, I love it. However, it only looks at core MSA units and not the more economically-accurate CSA units. In other words, the list cuts Worcester's, Manchester's, the Cape's, and Providence's MSAs away from the core Boston MSA. Easton and Mansfield don't even count in Boston's numbers in that list. Note that San Jose is separated from San Francisco as well, which from a metro economy viewpoint makes even less sense than separating Worcester out from Boston.

San Francisco CSA (includes Oakland, San Jose, Stockton, Santa Cruz): $711.2 billion
Washington CSA (includes Baltimore): $664.2 billion
Boston CSA (includes Worcester, Providence): $531.8 billion
Houston CSA: $525.4 billion
Dallas CSA: $508.3 billion
Philadelphia CSA (includes Atlantic City, Reading): $438.3 billion

 

[bigeman312]

When discussing the urbanity of Boston, why is Providence's GDP relevant? I understand it is relevant in discussing Boston's economic influence. But isn't that an entirely different debate?