Detroit one of America's most "compact" cities; Warren one of most "sprawling"

[Jaybiz]

Detroit was never all that dense, on the east side most of the housing built around City Airport & all the way to 8 mile city limits is, in its architecture[[not talking about current neglect & blight) almost indistinguishable from inner-ring suburbs being that its detached single family housing, driveway, garage & decent sized lawn [[basically everything north of Conner) & on the far north west side it resembles the housing of the outer suburbs built in 1950's-1970's. it's a far cry from New York or Chicago both where I lived but grew up in Detroit proper & old neighborhood is currently considered worst zip code in the US but living there from birth in 1978-1995 it was nothing more than a suburban neighborhood working class majority white hood nothing like Brooklyn or Chicago's working class ethic white areas which are intensely dense. Put it this way, most of what's left of Detroit housing has at least 10 feet of space between homes & those homes are single family so even at full capacity not considered dense unless someone was from a rural or far flung suburban area.

[313WX]

Detroit was never all that dense, on the east side most of the housing built around City Airport & all the way to 8 mile city limits is, in its architecture[[not talking about current neglect & blight) almost indistinguishable from inner-ring suburbs being that its detached single family housing, driveway, garage & decent sized lawn [[basically everything north of Conner) & on the far north west side it resembles the housing of the outer suburbs built in 1950's-1970's. it's a far cry from New York or Chicago both where I lived but grew up in Detroit proper & old neighborhood is currently considered worst zip code in the US but living there from birth in 1978-1995 it was nothing more than a suburban neighborhood working class majority white hood nothing like Brooklyn or Chicago's working class ethic white areas which are intensely dense. Put it this way, most of what's left of Detroit housing has at least 10 feet of space between homes & those homes are single family so even at full capacity not considered dense unless someone was from a rural or far flung suburban area.

See the below map of Detroit's population density from 1950. A lot of the city had a population of 20,000 people per sq. mi. [[on par with much of South Side Chicago) or greater. Very little of the city had a population density lower than 5,000 people per sq. mi.



A lot of the city was built like Hamtramck is now, not like the 48205 zip code.

[nain rouge]

I'm willing to put money that south Warren is more dense than Detroit , Warrens overall density [[including north end) is over over 4,000 sq mi & Detroit's is about 5,000 sq mi. Not much a difference & considering a typical suburb of Chicago like Berwyn has a Density of 14,564/sq mi, your facts bout Detroit are a mess!

Good thing you didn't put down any money yet, because you're wrong. Warren's density is just BELOW 4,000 people per square mile, and a quick fact check uncovers that the 48091 zip code [[South Warren around Van Dyke, the part of the city most like Detroit in terms of development) has a density of roughly 3,900 people per square mile, which is basically identical to the city's overall density level. South Warren is almost exclusively single-family, and the lots are about as big as what you would've gotten in an old ritzy Detroit neighborhood like Boston Edison.

You have to ask yourself, how did Detroit achieve a max population density of over 13,000 people per square mile, especially if many of the outer neighborhoods are comparable to South Warren? Well, it's because pre-Depression Detroit was DENSE as heck! You just can't see how anymore because so much has been demolished and replaced by empty lots or less dense modernist developments.

[Bham1982]

Well, it's because pre-Depression Detroit was DENSE as heck! You just can't see how anymore because so much has been demolished and replaced by empty lots or less dense modernist developments.

Remember that density measures people, not buildings. An area can have high population density, without high structural density [[see much of LA). I suspect that, based on that previously posted map, much of 1950 Detroit density was blacks being redlined/packed into ghettos near downtown, as the high density tracts very roughly mirror the majority black parts of the city. That does not mean that these areas had super-high structural density, though.