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That it interesting considering (from my own perspective anyway) How the counties of Greenville, Spartanburg, Pickens, and Anderson blend pretty well. Parts of Pickens, Anderson, and Spartanburg counties should be part of the UA of Greenville simply because dynamic growth has spread well into them. But that's just the way I see it, not that it's important to me anyway. :silly:

Well, I should also point out that what I said applies to the 2000 statistics, which is half a decade ago. I'm sure there have been changes, but to what extent, I am not sure.

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I agree with Skyliner too. Greenville's MSA looks really small in comparison but it's due to the fact that Spartanburg and Anderson are so close and no other counties touch us besides Pickens and Laurens. Anyway, hopefully the MSA will soon include most of the CSA if not all of it.

And I like this new smiley... SO :blush:

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We know that urbanity is largely centered around a city's downtown. That is, it's core. So starting at the core of the state's three dominant metro areas - Greenville, Charleston, and Columbia, we look at data for the city limits. We see that the city of Greenville has the most population density. That is not debatable. Not only that, but Greenville's population density is OVER TWICE THAT of Columbia and Charleston. You could combine Charleston and Columbia and still not have the population density of Greenville...

...And my response to that is, "That's fine." You take your slightly more-dense suburbs and have fun. I'll stick with Greenville, which has a higher population density in the core area as well as in the county (i.e., downtown and the vicinity). And you know what? Anyone truly interested in downtown development and core urbanity would agree.

:blink: Ummm...wow. Interesting post, to say the least. However, urbanity is more than just the city's DT, hence the reason for the urban area statistics. Again, as Spartan said earlier, this statistic is a much better representation of the true urban character. To only emphasize the dense core and completely ignore a city's dense surburbs manipulates the cities which have smaller limits into having denser populations. Like Spartan said, using that stat makes Spartanburg 2nd in density to SC cities. The same logic can be applied to a county which has smaller land mass but a large number of people.

All I merely asked was to take a closer look at the statistics. You can use census numbers at your leisure, but I find that to be counter-productive to your argument when many G'ville forumers have complained of how "unrepresentative" the census numbers are for the city's population alone. People here have been emphasizing that G'ville should not really be a city of 60,000, but closer to 150,000. This is because of the urban area stat!

Again, I didn't want to frustrate G'ville forumers or create a pissing contest. The numbers just didn't seem right, and Krazee and Spartan provided what I needed to know. Thanks guys! :thumbsup:

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I didn't say that a city's urbanity only consisted of the downtown area. What I did say, however, was that urbanity is largely centered around a city's downtown.

I don't really see how that is debatable, especially when you're talking about mid-size metros the size of the ones we find in SC. Sure, New York is going to have dense clusters all around the metro, but for SC cities, urbanity is mostly downtown, probably in the city limit, and almost certainly within the county. Wouldn't you agree?

Now I'm curious...which areas of Charleston do you consider to offer the level of urbanity we're talking about here (i.e., high population density, not much wasted space, etc.), yet aren't part of the city limit or the county?

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We know that urbanity is largely centered around a city's downtown. That is, it's core. So starting at the core of the state's three dominant metro areas - Greenville, Charleston, and Columbia, we look at data for the city limits. We see that the city of Greenville has the most population density. That is not debatable. Not only that, but Greenville's population density is OVER TWICE THAT of Columbia and Charleston. You could combine Charleston and Columbia and still not have the population density of Greenville.

"Whoa, hang on there!" shout the detractors. Greenville's city limits are smaller in terms of square miles than the other two. Despite the fact that each city's boundaries more than account for the downtown core, some say it's unfair to compare the three cities because the larger areas appear less dense.

So let's take a step out from the core and compare counties. Again, Greenville is the most dense. Remember what we said above about it not being "fair" to compare SC city populations, since the other two are being judged over a larger area than Greenville? Well, can't we still use the argument that it's not fair because a larger county dilutes the population more? You could (and some undoubtedly would if it helped Charleston or Columbia "win"), except that Greenville is the largest county in the state in terms of square miles.

So now we know that Greenville is the largest county in the state in terms of square miles, and is STILL the most densely populated. If I'm at all interested in numbers, that statistic pretty much signals the end of this debate. Greenville County just said, "We'll take a larger land area, compare it to your smaller area, and still have a higher population density than you!"

So if you still want to talk about urbanized areas, that's fine. But in comparing both city and county statistics, we are STILL including Charleston's "ultra-urban and dense" downtown area, and all of Columbia's densest areas. With all of the uproar over these density comparisons, you would think that Columbia and Charleston had their most dense areas ignored. They didn't.

So basically the peeing contest over density has come down to county versus urbanized area discussion. All one gains in looking at urbanized area over county populations are some suburbs - NOT heavily dense, urban, highly-populated areas. So if someone wants to claim that Greenville isn't really the most dense area in the state, and cites urbanized area numbers, all they are really doing is stating that Greenville's suburbs aren't quite as densely populated as another area's.

And my response to that is, "That's fine." You take your slightly more-dense suburbs and have fun. I'll stick with Greenville, which has a higher population density in the core area as well as in the county (i.e., downtown and the vicinity). And you know what? Anyone truly interested in downtown development and core urbanity would agree.

Excellent post!!!!! :thumbsup: VERY well worded! Totally agree!

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...Now I'm curious...which areas of Charleston do you consider to offer the level of urbanity we're talking about here (i.e., high population density, not much wasted space, etc.), yet aren't part of the city limit or the county?

You can take all of DT going up through the north area, along with parts of West Ashley and James Island not in the city limits (yet ;) ) and get very high density. Even parts of Mt. P and Daniel Island have good density...I'm not saying you're wrong, all I'm referring to is the density figures from the census in relation to the density figures for the urban area. Chas County is larger in land mass and yet the urban area is bigger than G'ville's. That is a fact for certain.

The numbers just don't make sense. They conflict with the census fact that G'ville is only a city of 60,000 which many here do not believe is an accurate assessment of how big the city really is or of how "urban" G'ville is. And I agree with that...city limits in G'ville should encompass close to 150,000.

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I didn't say that a city's urbanity only consisted of the downtown area. What I did say, however, was that urbanity is largely centered around a city's downtown.

I don't really see how that is debatable, especially when you're talking about mid-size metros the size of the ones we find in SC. Sure, New York is going to have dense clusters all around the metro, but for SC cities, urbanity is mostly downtown, probably in the city limit, and almost certainly within the county. Wouldn't you agree?

Now I'm curious...which areas of Charleston do you consider to offer the level of urbanity we're talking about here (i.e., high population density, not much wasted space, etc.), yet aren't part of the city limit or the county?

I think it is a valid statement to say that urbanity is centered around the downtown area. Particularly in SC.

Urbanity is certainly within the city limits, that has been proven by my posts of small cities and towns with low populations and densities higher than Charleston and Columbia.

Now with that said, you have to consider the city limits of each place because that is the defining method of Greenville's population density of 2,148 people per square mile. As you said, Greenville's city limits reflect the core of its population, so why would you assume the same for Charleston, Columbia? If the city limits only reflect the core area then that means we have some disparities in what we know as density here.

Lets review my list of densities of cities (read: municipalities) accross South Carolina, which show some interesting bits of information:

Density (people/square mile) - Bold cities are shown in my maps below

  1. West Columbia = 2,150

  2. Greenville = 2,148

  3. Spartanburg = 2,066

  4. Chester = 2,042

  5. Anderson = 1,843

  6. Summerville = 1,806

  7. Lexington = 1,724

  8. Florence = 1,709

  9. Gaffney = 1,649

  10. Clemson = 1,620

  11. Rock Hill = 1,603

  12. Aiken = 1,566

  13. Darlington = 1,565

  14. Hartsville = 1,516

  15. Orangeburg = 1,539

  16. Sumter = 1,491

  17. Lancaster = 1,406

  18. Georgetown = 1,368

  19. Cayce = 1,114

  20. Kingstree = 1,114

  21. Port Royal = 1,012

  22. Honea Path = 1,004

  23. Charleston = 996

  24. Cowpens = 979

  25. Columbia = 928

I give you this many cities mostly because I was curious about how other cities and towns in out state compared to each other. But also to prove a point. Lets continue-

Check out these same density maps as before, only with the city limits of each place layerd on top:

CharlestonDensity_CL.jpg

ColumbiaDensity_CL.jpg

GreenvilleDensity_CL.jpg

SpartanburgDensity_CL.jpg

Notice that each is in the same scale, and notice how small Greenville's city limits are when compared to Columbia and Charleston. Also notice how much emptiness is in these other two cities. Columbia has fort Jackson, a very large tract of nothingness that is nearly the size of the rest of the city! Charleston's city limits include large tracts of marsh, the Ashely River, and parts of the Cooper as well as Daniel Island, which is largely undeveloped except for the 'Daniel Island' community, which is no where near being built out.

However, Since you want to talk about the urban core, lets do just that!

Lets assume that Greenville's city limits more or less represent its urban core. That means that Greenville's 56,000 people are crammed into the city's approximately 24-25 square miles.

Columbia's city limits a very large. Much more so than Greenville. Yet they do not encompas the entire urban core of the city! We cannot forget Cayce and West Columbia (which has a density higher than Greenville's).

Charleston on the other hand has very a rather large city boundary as well. However, the 1990 census was Charleston's first census where more than half of its residents lived outside of the peninsula. That means that of Charleston's prroximately 100,000 people, at least 49,000 of them live on the peninsula, in an area less than 4.5 square miles! That means a density on the peninsula of 10,888 people per square mile. Those numbers are approximate, but even if they are off by 2,150 it still remains higher than Greenville.

My point is that if you want to compare the urban core, you can't rely solely on the municipal city statistics. You need to compare the actual core area. Charleston is by far the denses city in this fair state.

As for the counties- Charleston Couty includes a great deal of water, marsh, and Francis Marion National Forest, none of which can ever be developed. Greenville has essentially no boundaries except for the mountains in the north. Yes Greenville county has a higher population density, but that is because it has a larger population living in one area. Charleston's growth spills over into Berkeley and Dorchester Counties, and a large portion of Columbia's growth, including parts of its core is in Lexington County. So while Greenville has the 2nd most dense city in SC by default, and the densest by fact. However, if you were to calculate the undevelopable land in Charleston I would suspect that you will find its number to be much closer if not higher than Greenville.

I think that I have made my point here. If you want to compare things, you must do it on a level field. While you cannot deny that Greenville has a solid core, and one of the fastest growing in the state, it is a hard thing for my to buy that it is the densest core, when I have been to Charleston, and I know better.

I feel like I have explained this fairly well, and I mean no offense to Greenville in any way. Its certainly a great city to be sure. The other side of this argument, of course, is that if Greenville's city limits were closer in size to Columbia or Charleston then it would arguably have a similar density to theirs.

Columbia and Charleston suffer from the fate of being proactive annexation cities. They have so much land that has nothing on it yet that it detracts from their density figure. This must absolutely be taken into account when discussing these cities.

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Is all the red area on Cola's map the actual city limits? Same for Charleston? How could they be finding it so easy to annex land in such a short period of time, while the Upstate cities struggle to gain an acre at a time? Could you link us to the source of these maps, Spartan? :)

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Those maps are generated from Census2000 TIGER/Line data files that I extracted directly from ESRI (the people that make the GIS software I use). From that I extracted only the core city for each one. I have actually gone back and edited Columbia, as I forgot to include the section in Lexington County. I intentionally left out cities such as North Charleston, Mauldin, and Forest Acres as they only clutter the map for this purpose.

The red areas represent the city limits of each place as of 2000. In all cases they are actually a bit larger than they were six years ago. I assure you they are quite accurate.

However, if you wish to check my work you can use this site from the Census to look the city limits up yourself. I caution you that their maps are not easy to read. They show all cities, towns, and CDP's, which are not incorporated places at all. Military bases, etc are shown in a pinkish color.

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That would be excellent, Spartan! :thumbsup: I just want to get some perspective on which areas were more or less populated in 2000 for comparison to the next census data. Things will undoubtedly look much different once that data is collected (apart from the city limits). Thanks in advance!

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That is great, Spartan! the whole Upstate is showing signs of growing together in many diferent forms.

Check out THIS link and scroll to page 11 to see the new subdivisions in Greenville County from 2001 to 2004. It will help in speculating the further density changes that will occur before next census, since these are not even halfway to 2010. :)

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Those maps are generated from Census2000 TIGER/Line data files that I extracted directly from ESRI (the people that make the GIS software I use). From that I extracted only the core city for each one. I have actually gone back and edited Columbia, as I forgot to include the section in Lexington County. I intentionally left out cities such as North Charleston, Mauldin, and Forest Acres as they only clutter the map for this purpose.

The red areas represent the city limits of each place as of 2000. In all cases they are actually a bit larger than they were six years ago. I assure you they are quite accurate.

Spartan, all I have to say is...well done! I am literally impressed. You've definitely done your research. I can vouch for the Charleston city limits, but there have been more annexations of the "donut holes" on James Island and West Ashley areas. Note the densities of the donut holes surrounded by the city limits. If all of these areas were within the limits, the density would be more accurate as well.

Again, Spartan, excellent job. Thanks for doing that! :thumbsup:

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  • 3 weeks later...

I beg to differ, son. Greenville is indeed annexing land, although it may not be the same size chunks as in the other cities. A few this past year were quite decent in size for the Upstate. ;)

That's very true! And it's not residential either. ICAR/Millinium Campus, Congaree Rd, Woodruff Rd... Yet Greenville's density is still up there. :rolleyes:

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