To be clear: I'm a fan of weighted density. It's better than simple density. It's just that it still suffers from selection effects. I think it's still just an

To be clear: I'm a fan of weighted density. It's better than simple density. It's just that it still suffers from selection effects. I think it's still just an unsolvable problem. Which suburban areas get glommed on to the dense core? Weighting reduces the impact of low density glommers, but if you glom on as many people as the urban core has from medium density suburbs, with a different culture and self identification, you get an inaccurate picture. It's true that LA has some urban bits. And it's suburban bits aren't nearly as suburban as in other places. It's more about the central problem of defining urban. To me, Fremont isn't even vaguely the same region as SF. SF has cultural attractions, Fremont does not. In Fremont, you need a car (I once walked 3 miles through Fremont to get to my bed for the night. I got a lot of bemused stares). SF, and Boston, and Manhattan, feel like they're cities, and people who live in the outlying regions don't claim they live in the recognizable urban core. LA has a few dense zip codes, but everyone, including all the folks in relatively low density areas, feels like they live in LA.