On California: A Dense Hotbed of Urbanism, U.S. Census Reveals

Gold LA, photo by Neil Kremer

The U.S. Census released a report on urban population on Monday, and in it was a perhaps-unexpected fact: Of the ten most densely populated cities, seven of them are in California. Indeed, California’s showing was so strong that the great bastion of urbanism in the United States — the New York-Newark metro area — just barely made the top five.

John King, the San Francisco Chronicle’s urban design critic, interviewed a number of experts about California’s unique status. Among them was Jon Christensen, executive director of the Bill Lane Center for the American West at Stanford University. One of Christensen’s quotes caught my attention, so I followed up with him via email to explore why California is such a hotbed of urbanism. Our correspondence follows:

Tim De Chant: What’s special about California that it has so many dense urban areas?

Jon Christensen: The American West, in general, and California, in particular, is really a metropolitan region and has been for a long time. California, Nevada, Utah, and Arizona are among the 10 most urbanized states. The settlement pattern in the West is one of concentrated cities surrounded by wide open spaces — often substantially made up of public lands. This is true of California as well.

So it’s really the interplay of the history of cities and their hinterlands in the American West that explains why California has such dense urban areas. The fact that they are among the most dense urban areas in the country is also a result of population growth in California. The state has been and still is a great place for many people to live.

Read the rest of the interview at Per Square Mile »