The perfect Population size for the Burgh ?? (Pittsburgh, Washington: apartment, new home)

[Blackbeauty212]

What would be the perfect population size for Pittsburgh to make the City County and Metro seem vibrant healthy and growing, but remain somewhat of a bargin/affordable and retain that sense of place (most livable).

For me I say

City Proper - 450k

County - 1.7M

Metro - 3M

I dont think the City could handle a 600k population again without things getting very expensive to live.

[Geeo]

I think your estimates are pretty dead-on. The city area is really pretty compact and couldn't handle more than 450,000 or 500,000.

Pittsburgh should have never had 676,000 people in 1950 to begin with and couldn't do it again without a breakdown in quality of life. Remember, in 1950 a lot of people had only one or no cars. We had a great trolley system that most people used. If we tried to pack that many people in and everyone had a car or two, it would be chaos. In 1950, more people lived closer to work. We didn't have as many sprawling suburbs as we have today.

Also, household sizes were a lot larger in 1950 than today. Families were bigger and people had more kids. Plus many families were crammed into substandard housing in crowded neighborhoods.

Even with fewer people, traffic is still terrible today! I guess a lot of it has to do with the daytime population, which is probably in the half-million range.

[Hopes]

I don't want more people. Our roads can't handle it. Maybe if they moved here slowly.

[BrianTH]

I tend to think of this issue in terms of growth rates, not levels. For a mature city to maintain a sense of progress/renewal and attract sufficient outside investment, I don't think you need more than around 5-10% growth per decade in the urbanized area, and it can be considerably less than that in the central city (assuming it has fixed geographic boundaries).

I think levels come into play when you are thinking in terms of ultimate constraints. I think you are right on with 450K for the City: much past that, and you will have to start tearing up a lot of structures, fundamentally changing the character of established neighborhoods, and so forth, in order to add a lot more people. That may have to happen in the far future, but I think we should keep in mind that the City is really quite small geographically.

In fact when thinking of the core area, I think we should really be thinking about a lot of the closest-in suburbs in addition to the City. When you add those to the City, you get a lot more room for possible expansion of the population, in part because you are adding a lot more brownfields, high-vacancy areas, and so forth. Right now the City plus all its neighboring municipalities has a population of about 680,000 people (I'm not sure what the official 2010 Census number is). I'd guess that could get up to about 1.2 million, give or take, before running into serious constraints.

The next unit I would talk about is not the County but rather the urbanized area, which is basically the City plus all its major suburbs but not exurbs (so not including the farther out small towns and rural parts of the Metro). The Pittsburgh urbanized area had a population of 1.75 million in 2000, and I suspect it was higher in 2010 (it had grown from 1990 to 2000). I think we have room for that number to go a lot higher, in part because an urbanized area is not fixed in terms of geography, and because our urbanized area could be a lot more dense. Roughly speaking, I think our urbanized area could probably get to at least 4 million. Note that while this wouldn't necessarily require changing the character of existing dense neighborhoods and suburbs, it would require some other currently low-density suburbs to at least add denser parts.

Meanwhile, it is possible that even outside the urbanized area, smaller towns and such could grow into viable small cities. In fact, ultimately I could see the Pittsburgh and Cleveland metros sort of growing into each other to form what is called a Combined Statistical Area (Washington and Baltimore, for example, are part of one CSA). The population of such a Pittsland (aka Cleveburgh) CSA could really go arbitrarily high.

Of course all this will only be possible if we radically upgrade our transportation systems and other crucial infrastructure (e.g., our water and sewer systems). But if I was mapping out an ideal long-term growth path, it would look something like that, and it wouldn't necessarily happen too fast at the growth rates I was suggesting.

[SteelCityRising]

I don't think it's an issue that our metro area as a whole needs repopulated. I think we just need to strategize on how to better move people within our region and how to better concentrate our residents nearer to existing established areas. I hate to see new projects like McCandless Crossings or Settler's Ridge springing up, and I abhor new homes being built in every suburban nook-and-cranny at a time when we're still losing population overall. This just means people are sp-r--a---w----l-----i------n------g themselves out further and further, lending them to drive more and further congesting our roads. I hate that our area's only IKEA is in Robinson Township. I hate that the Ross Park Mall has our area's only Crate & Barrel. Why not build both in the city and encourage suburbanites to come into the city to shop (you know---like the "good 'ole days") instead of the other way around? Whole Foods and Trader Joe's are major regional draws in the city for suburbanites. IKEA and Crate & Barrel could have been the same.

I'll be the first to admit I live in the city and drive just about 3 miles to my workplace in another part of the city when I can easily walk to the East Busway's Herron Avenue stop and take that to East Liberty. I'm a bad example to follow. I think after the recent "Great Recession" (or "Great Reset") we're seeing more and more people who want to adopt a minimalist lifestyle again. I live in a 1-BR apartment that is only about 700 square feet, but even then I have a lot of unused space. My landlady thought it would be perfectly suited for "a single person", but I think my partner and I could both live here comfortably. The thought of two people living harmoniously in just 700 square feet of living space would boggle the minds of many suburbanites, but if more people adopted this mindset, then you could very easily see the city repopulated again.

[pman]

Originally Posted by Geeo

I think your estimates are pretty dead-on. The city area is really pretty compact and couldn't handle more than 450,000 or 500,000.

Pittsburgh should have never had 676,000 people in 1950 to begin with and couldn't do it again without a breakdown in quality of life. Remember, in 1950 a lot of people had only one or no cars. We had a great trolley system that most people used. If we tried to pack that many people in and everyone had a car or two, it would be chaos. In 1950, more people lived closer to work. We didn't have as many sprawling suburbs as we have today.

Also, household sizes were a lot larger in 1950 than today. Families were bigger and people had more kids. Plus many families were crammed into substandard housing in crowded neighborhoods.

Even with fewer people, traffic is still terrible today! I guess a lot of it has to do with the daytime population, which is probably in the half-million range.

does boston have a low QOL?

[SteelCityRising]

Originally Posted by pman

does boston have a low QOL?

Good point. Does Hoboken, NJ for that matter?

[BrianTH]

The current City of Boston has about 618,000 people in 90 square miles. Applying the same density to the City of Pittsburgh and its 58 square miles, you get about 400,000 people. And that's not accounting for all the developable area Pittsburgh loses to its topography.

[Caladium]

Originally Posted by SteelCityRising

Why not build both in the city and encourage suburbanites to come into the city to shop (you know---like the "good 'ole days") instead of the other way around?

I can see wanting those stores in the city to serve the local residents, but it seems strange to want to encourage suburbanites to drive into the city for shopping. That just makes traffic worse. IMO no matter where people live it's best to have shopping and (ideally) their jobs right in the same area so they can drive as little as possible. So tell C&B to build a city store to supplement the suburban store, not replace it.

On a side note, I walked to work this morning. It was beautiful and I saw my very first rose for this year! Tonight I'll stop at the store on my way home. I would hate it if I had to drive into the city for everything.

[Caladium]

Re: population size, IMO 400,000-450,000 is a pleasant and manageable size. Growth is nice, but too much growth can be a bad thing.