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A stray comment on the culture-war thread from two weeks ago reminds me that, IMO, people on this website have been talking very loosely when they compare "urban", "suburban", and "rural" living.
The definitions endorsed by the United Nations are roughly as follows.
Urban: ≥ 1500 people per km2 (6.1 people per acre)
Suburban: ≥ 300 people per km2 (1.2 people per acre)
Rural: < 300 people per km2 (1.2 people per acre)
However, six people per acre actually isn't that dense. The US's IZC (International Zoning Code) is not necessarily authoritative, but in its single-family and two-family residential zones it permits density of up to six dwelling units per acre, implying 15 people per acre at 2.5 people per household.⁎
Likewise, a representative comment describes suburbs as follows:
Yet, if you look at a random US "city" in Google Maps, you will see lots of single-family houses with their own backyards and limited access to mass transit.
So, what do you actually mean when you say "urban", "suburban", and "rural" living? Maybe it's something like this.
Urban living: Row houses and apartment buildings, with incidental retail
Suburban living: Single-family and two-family houses, and nothing else
Rural living: Incidental single-family houses in land that is largely agricultural or undeveloped
⁎With tongue significantly less than halfway in cheek, I previously suggested that the threshold for a fourth "mega-city" category in the UN's framework might be set at 7500 people per km2 (30 people per acre). This matches the IZC's upper bound for multifamily residential zones (12 dwelling units per acre), past which commercial/residential zones with unlimited dwelling-unit density must be used instead.
What are the actual cities in America? It doesn’t need to be the entire city but that you would classify as having a significant sized zone that can be car free?
NYC, Chicago, Miami that I know of. LA I want to say No to. Seattle, Boston, and San Francisco I haven’t spent much time in.
My definition would be a minimum walking zone of 500k. I kind of want to exclude any area that is purely ethnic enclave.
Looking at Table 3 in this Census report you could argue that NYC is the only "actual" city in America: the only large city where the majority of commuters use public transport. (Focusing on commuters makes the most sense to me - if you need a car to get to work then you need a car, and if you don't then you're probably fine in general since you probably have many more options for most needs and amenities than you do for your workplace.)
I'd use a slightly more expansive definition than "majority", though. Chicago's at 28%, for instance, which is pretty impressive, and that also gets us San Francisco, DC, and Boston. If we go down to a nice round 25% we also get (just barely) Philadelphia and Seattle. Miami, though? 8%? That's worse than LA! I'll take your word for it that Miami has a car-free-friendly zone, but it must be a very local one?
Your definition seems fair enough to me. Though I think a city can have a zone that’s urban even if most of the city is car.
Chicago is a bit odd because the City has a large amount of land within its zone. It’s a big reason why its per capita murder rate isn’t that high but it has a few neighborhoods with crazy amount of murder. It urban core is quite big where you can walk to work, church, Whole Foods, theatre and job within a 20 min walk. That’s probably about 10 sq mile zone.
Someone gave a tool for estimating population size. Brickell you can do that. The Miami zone it says is 200k people which feels smaller than the people I think live there. I threw out 500k for the size of the zone and would agree Miami is small for that. Miami is a little light on employers if your not Spanish speaking but it’s definitely possible to work at Citadel and have a full social life and never do anything farther than a 20 min walk.
When I’ve visited sun belt cities I can’t remember any full walkable neighborhoods. NYC is probably the only city that is entirely city. I think half a dozen perhaps a few more have a core of 200k-1m that fits the definition.
As far as I know Houston, Phoenix, and Dallas have zero car free neighborhoods and I tend to think LA is fairly limited.
My highly scientific attempt at drawing a 5 km radius around the walkable urban areas of candidate cities:
Edit: What we really need is someone with access to Walk Score to cross-reference it with the Global Human Settlement Layer using some kind of clustering algorithm.
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