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I found the above image on a skyscraper forum which I frequent (click for full sized image.) It depicts the land area used by several metropolises around the world. What is most shocking, I find, is our terrible land usage thus far. In a space where we have only been able to accommodate just over 5 million people, other cities have populations of 9 or even 12 million people. Our space on the map is nearly the biggest one and yet, we’re still looking to expand the area to account for future growth? Where is the sense in that? We need to seriously alter our growth patterns, embrace higher density projects, and start living a more vertical lifestyle down here real soon…
I found the above image on a skyscraper forum which I frequent (click for full sized image.) It depicts the land area used by several metropolises around the world. What is most shocking, I find, is our terrible land usage thus far. In a space where we have only been able to accommodate just over 5 million people, other cities have populations of 9 or even 12 million people. Our space on the map is nearly the biggest one and yet, we’re still looking to expand the area to account for future growth? Where is the sense in that? We need to seriously alter our growth patterns, embrace higher density projects, and start living a more vertical lifestyle down here real soon…
Dude, the Miami space is nowhere near as large as Chicago, NYC, or Los Angeles, nor many of the others. It is an illusion because of how long and skinny Miami’s size is.
The Miami metro has 1,116 square miles of urbanized land (6,137 when you include marshland/everglades).
Compare that to:
NYC-6,720
Chicago-10,874
LA-4,850
Atlanta-8,376
Boston-4,674
Philadelphia-5,118
Houston-10,062
If you follow the spirit of the post, then you begin to really understand the dilemma. Using the cities sited in the above comment, I checked the Census data on the cities to see how population is related the land usage. The true spirit of the post was how dense the population is in those areas. Cities with larger populations utilize less land than in Miami. This is true in your list as well.
New York- Population of 8,085,742 with 26,402.9 people per square mile
LA- Population of 3,819,951 with 7,876.8 people per square mile
Chicago- Population of 2,869,121 with 12,750.3 people per square mile
Miami- Population of 2,376,014 with 1,157.9 people per square mile
Houston- Population of 2,009,690 with 3,371.7 people per square mile
Philadelphia- Population of 1,479,339 with 11,233.6 people per square mile
Boston- Population of 581,616 with 12,165.8 people per square mile
Atlanta- Population of 423,019 with 3,161.2 people per square mile
Just in that short list of cities, we see that Miami has the 4th largest population, but the least amount of people per square mile. Basically we need to make better use of our space and transit or we will continue to experience worse sprawl and longer commute times.
While I love how you guys are taking an interest in Miami’s planning issues, these statistics have struck a nerve of mine.
Mark, you’ve posted only Miami-Dade County’s figures, while you posted figures for those other city’s entire metropolitan statistical areas.
Steve, you’ve posted population data for the above CITY PROPERS and their respective population densities, but then you used Miami-Dade County’s statistics, which are METROPOLITAN (totally different).
I’m just going to clear up a few statisitics, then we can move on.
Miami, as in the City of Miami, has a population of approximately 383,000 in only 36 square miles. That equates to a city population density of approximately 10,700 per sq mile. Thus, the City of Miami is the 6th densest major city in the country after the following cities, in descending order: New York, San Francisco, Chicago, Boston, Philadelphia).
I get frustrated when people casually interchange “Miami” with “Miami-Dade”. As a general rule, when you hear statistics for “Miami”, they usually will be for the city, not the county. But hey, that’s a symptom of the ridiculous fragmentation in the county, as Gabe spoke of the other day.
Also, Atlanta and Houston are two of the most sprawling cities in this country. Actually, if you go by miles driven per capita, Atlanta is the most car-dependent city in the world.
Atlanta’s population density is only about 3,200 per square mile. Houston is just as bad, at about 3,500 per square mile. Jacksonville is perhaps the worst offender, though, with barely 1,000 per square mile. That’s why I hate when people refer to Houston as a “huge” city, fourth largest in the country - it takes Houston over 600 square miles just to get 2 million people (while it took Brooklyn only 71 sq. mi. to get 2.5 million). In further comparison, Darby, Pennsylvania (a suburb of Philly), Yonkers (suburb on NYC), and Everett (suburb of Boston) all have population densities over 11,000 per square mile, over 3x more dense than Houston, Atlanta, etc. and they are only suburbs.
I think the point of Gabe’s post was this: Brooklyn, NY, not even a city but a borough, at only 71 square miles has a population of 2.5 million. On the contrary, Miami-Dade County, with over 1,000 more square miles of urbanized land than Brooklyn, still doesn’t even match Brooklyn’s population. Even deeper, New York City has a population of about 8,100,000 in only about 320 sq. miles. Thus, if NYC had a similar area as Miami-Dade County, it would have a population of roughly 30,000,00 people!
Point= South Florida is mostly sprawl, and is definitely not maximizing its’ land use capabilities.
True, metro Miami is actually the 4th densest metro in the country (behind only NYC, LA, & SF) and by far the smallest (geographically) of the large metros. Basically that map is just flat out wrong as it shows the entire Miami metro (plus some) but only small fractions of most other metros.
I know that I pulled the data for the entire Miami-Dade County and not just the city. That is mostly to remain consistent with the comment I was replying to. As I look at the picture of the Miami metropolitan area on that map, I was trying to see just how far up the state it went. As I opened Google Earth, I immediately recognized the outlines as not only Miami-Dade, but Broward and Palm Beach Counties as well. Essentially it is everything from Jupiter to Florida City.
Since the entire tri-county area is shown in that image, why not take a look at the census data for those three counties and really get a proper image of density in the region. The Image shows 5,125 square miles total (obtained from Census data for the entire counties of Miami-Dade, Broward, and Palm Beach) with 5,422,200 people residing in that area. This equates to roughly 1057.99 people per square mile.
For one thing the majority of Miami-Dade and large fractions of Broward & Palm Beach are unpopulated wilderness. If you take only the “populated areas” the density comes out to 4407 per sq mile. Here is a link showing the densities of urban areas in the US (roughly metro areas):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Largest_urban_areas_of_the_United_States
According to the 2000 Census, Miami is the 12th densest city, with a population of 10,160/mile… Hialeah meanwhile is the 8th densest city with a population of 11,766/mile. Hialeah is more dense than Philadelphia… but in place of Philadelphia’s urbanism Hialeah has only high density sprawl.
The form of density matters more than population density itself - and unfortunately, a forest of 50-story condo towers sitting on 15-story parking garages is not going to help encourage transit use or an active street life.
We’re talking major cities here. Hialeah doesn’t count. Otherwise, you could throw in cities like Newark and Yonkers. You’re exactly right about Hialeah vs. Philadelphia. Anyone who’s ever been to both cities would probably consider Hialeah a cow-town compared to Philly.
Good point about the quality of density and the parking garages, too, Made in Dade.
I agree completely on the quality of density rather than simple “population per square mile” measurements. West Kendall and Fountainebleau are two of the densest regions in South Florida. Both rival South Beach for pop/sqmile but they were constructed with only the car in mind with most of their sprawling apartment complexes surrounded by walls and the only way in or out is through the buildings single driveway.
Exactly, Dave.
I hate sprawl. But the idiots at Miami-Dade County keep permitting development west near the Everglades. They should be doing urban infill. The City of Miami should be doing urban infill.