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Chicago has much more sprawl than San Jose. The latter is confined somewhat by geography and several open space preserves, while there is apparently nothing to
by evgen 18y ago
Chicago has much more sprawl than San Jose. The latter is confined somewhat by geography and several open space preserves, while there is apparently nothing to stop the westward migration of Chicago's suburbs. After spending my university years in the Chicago area it was very bizarre to visit last week and realize that you can almost drive from the loop to Rockford without leaving suburbs/exurbs along I80. It is somewhat similar to how Austin and Round Rock used to actually be cities separated by open expanses of empty space and now the trip between the two cities can be navigated just by hopping from one strip mall parking lot to another...
- tptacek 18y agoYou had to predict that someone was going to offer up a bespoke definition of "sprawl" to defend San Jose, and there you go. Thanks! First, if you want to define "sprawl" geographically, then the Bay Area and Chicago are almost identical: it's 40.4 miles from the loop to Elgin, and 40.2 miles from the Sunset to Pleasanton. In both cases, that drive is an unbroken parade of suburbs. Second, the conventional definition of "sprawl" is by population density. Chicago's is 12,500/sq mile; 2.8M people live within the borders of the city. San Francisco is more dense, but has only 800,000 people. No valley city even comes close. Finally, your anecdote about the drive to Rockford would apply just as well to NYC --- drive 50 miles in any direction from NYC waiting for the suburbs to stop. Apparently NYC is also a sprawl city. Notice I'm giving you the most favorable possible comparison here, pretending you compared San Francisco to Chicago and not San Jose. Saying "Chicago has much more sprawl than San Jose" is like saying "Chicago has much more sprawl than Oak Brook, IL". San Jose is a suburb with a couple tall buildings, surrounded on all sides by 10-15 miles of flatter suburbs.
- omnivore 18y agoI think public transportation in the NYC area makes the "sprawl" into Jersey, Connecticut or even parts of PA not so bad. Hailing from that region, but living now in the western outskirts of Chicagoland, I can attest to the very strange difference of the sprawl here versus what I'd term as "cohesive" outgrowth in NYC.
- tptacek 18y agoIf you're out by Plainfield or (god help you) Dekalb, you're dealing with the impact of the mortgage bubble over the last 10 years, which has totally over-developed the former farmland that surrounded Chicago. Much of the Chicago suburbs have public transportion access that rivals the NYC suburbs.