Strikes me as a better way to rank metros by density, or at least as a way to rank the density of urban cores, but the actual numbers they spit out are not quite realistic.
31 thousand people per square mile is, like, Brooklyn levels of density- in other words, obviously quite a bit more dense than the median NYC-area resident experiences. Yes, there is plenty of city, but even here the majority of metro area residents live in the suburbs.
Because it's a census-tract-based measure you have to be careful about comparing the numbers to overall density numbers which give equal weight to uninhabited areas. Brooklyn's overall density of about 36 thousand per mile includes Prospect Park, Green-Wood Cemetery, various uninhabited areas in the Jamaica Bay parks and the industrial harbour, etc. But there are actually relatively few residential census tracts in Brooklyn that are that low in density; the average Brooklyn resident lives in a much denser tract. So the NY number is not saying that the average resident of the area lives in conditions like Brooklyn. 31 thousand per mile at the residential tract level is more typical of certain areas of Queens or the north Bronx.
Mm, good point. I'd be surprised if even Queens levels of density accurately capture the experience of the median metro-area resident: I mean, there are almost 20 million metro area residents, and only 8.3 million New Yorkers. So the median metro area resident has to be outside of the city limits. Now, granted, there are some very dense areas outside of the city- but really not
that many- the stretch of Hudson County from Jersey City up to tiny, jam-packed Guttenberg is the only really large and really consistently dense-enough part. For example, take a look at the urban areas of Essex County- for instance Irvington, which doesn't really have any open space to speak of that could skew the numbers, and is quite obviously one of the most "urban" areas outside of the city, but still clocks in at under 20K people per square mile.
And, of course, there are hundreds of thousands of NYC residents who live in areas less dense than that, as well. Virtually all of Staten Island, for instance. Yes, the median tract in the NYC metro should obviously be the densest median tract in the country. But I'd be shocked if it broke 20K people per square mile.
