Top 10 Most Urbanist Cities in North America

What are the most “urbanist” cities in North America, the places you might gravitate to if you enjoy dense, lively, mixed-use neighbourhoods and not being required to drive? Subjective impressions are easy but building an objective ranking based on factors like density and transportation patterns is harder. In this video we’re going to score the top 10 urbanist cities in the U.S. and Canada using a method that we think lines up with how people actually experience their city, which is at the neighbourhood level.

Keep Urbanity rolling:

[proposmontreal]

Great take on it, now let's see City Nerds rebuttal.

[randomcharacters]

As a resident of NYC, it's crazy to me that neighborhoods that here people think of as almost suburban (outer Queens, Staten Island) out-urban areas basically in the cores of other major American cities.

[OhTheUrbanity]

Keep in mind the caveats we mentioned in the video: our cut-offs are arbitrary and some data is noisy (imprecise) at the level of the census tract.

[TheScourge]

I like having different urbanist takes on city tier lists because it reveals a couple of things. 1) Exact rankings of cities are sensitive to what methods one uses but 2) pretty much any half-way sensible method gives you most of the same cities competing for top spots. So my take away is that living in any of the top 10 or so cities will give a person good options for urbanist living (except maybe LA where yes, there's a lot of urbanist land in an absolute sense but its pretty small compared to the size of the city so good luck getting into that!).

And another thing that emerges from this is that urbanist cities don't all have affordability issues! Sure the west coast in general (both US and Canada) is an affordability nightmare and NYC/Toronto/Boston aren't that much better, but then you've got places like Montreal, Chicago, and Philadelphia that buck that trend and provide both urbanism and affordability. Washington kind of does too but that doesn't show up as clearly when just looking at rental/home prices because the median income in that metro is so high.

[foodbag]

I had the privilege of growing up in NYC and it has definitely made me a walkability snob. Going to San Jose after a quarter century of dense urban living was hell and I’m pretty ok with Seattle now and optimistic for its future, but I am happily settling down in my wife’s home city of Chicago. Both a chronically underrated city by outsiders and overrated by insiders, it’s an absolute gem and has very strong neighborhood communities. There’s a comfortable density in the areas that aren’t vacant lots and walking and cycling is very easy. The bus system is phenomenal and reliable but the metro is hit or miss when it comes to safety and smell. The El feels like the NYC subway in the 80s. It’s a great urbanístico city and is actually a fantastic canvas for improvement.

[moisesmaldonado]

As for "North America" Mexico City and Guadalajara have pretty interesting combination of transit, density, and intensity of use at a neighborhood level. This approach is just half of the picture. ✌️

[stllr_]

the pre-amble immediately told me that this was a video inspired by the shortcomings of citynerd's tier list, and i was very excited to see it. being from the GTA, i knew that toronto should not have been held liable for brampton's suburban sprawl, and i'm very happy to see this different take. similarly happy to see the acknowledgement of shortcomings within your own method as well. it's surprising that there isn't more research on these topics when living and town-alignment is something that literally every human on earth has to interact with, but i'm very happy you tried your best anyways. this has been a super interesting look into the urbanist situations across both videos.

[alcubierrevj]

Woohoo, Philadelphia at #6. Having lived in most sections of the city, and walked and taken every form of public transportation to every corner of the city the urbanist vibe is genuine. I love how Philly, like other NE older cities combines super high density high rises with an almost endless number rowhomes whose myriad styles and elevations can define a neighborhood, but also be unique, particularly the brick, brownstone or marble ones. On the other hand, the city is still full of cars and indeed has a parking problem, with folks parking in the median (!) of North or South Broad street being exhibit A.

[canucksforever]

Here are the Metropolitan Area Populations for each of the runner-up cities:
Calgary: 1, 482, 000
Winnipeg: 835, 000
Minneapolis: 3, 690, 000
Pittsburg: 2, 370, 000
Portland: 2, 511, 000
Victoria: 397, 000
Quebec City: 839, 000
Baltimore: 2, 921, 000
Los Angles: 13, 201, 000
Ottawa: 1, 488, 000

Congrats to Victoria for being fairly urban while also being a pretty small city (in comparison to the others). Although, as someone from Winnipeg, I have to give ourselves a pat on the back for making it in at #19 despite the -40C winters haha.

[SupaSupaKewl]

Pretty neat that 8 of the top 20 urbanist cities are in Canada. Glad we’re making cities better!

[Matandfun]

1. New York City 8:06
2. Toronto 6:54
3. Chicago 6:15
4. Montreal 5:36
5. San Francisco 4:42
6. Philadelphia 4:00
7. Boston 3:36
8. Vancouver 2:54
9. Washington D.C. 2:12
10. Seattle 1:36
11. Ottawa 7:58
12. Los Angeles 7:57
13. Baltimore 7:56
14. Quebec City 7:55
15. Victoria 7:54
16. Portland 7:53
17. Pittsburgh 7:52
18. Minneapolis 7:51
19. Winnipeg 7:50
20. Calgary 7:48

[loganp]

Love this video as a Montreal Resident who grew up in Chicago!

[SulfuricDonut]

I live near Winnipeg and can confirm that your criteria matches pretty much exactly with which neighbourhoods are the "urbanist" ones. Exactly the areas that we are looking to move to, but also exactly the areas where housing prices skyrocketed the most. Almost like people like that style of living or something.

[j.p.leskovich]

Love to see Pittsburgh make the top 20! Happy resident of one of the urbanist areas 😊

[cristinamazza]

As somebody living in downtown Toronto, I really appreciated your approach, as I wouldn’t have enjoyed living in a walkable neighbourhood if I felt like I needed a car whenever I needed to leave. For example, today I have an appointment in midtown, which I can easily access by bike or transit. As much as I appreciated TOD in the suburbs in theGreater Toronto Area, those are limited and can’t beat being in a city with plenty of great neighbourhoods I can bike to.

[TheOneWithComments]

I have to wonder why Mexico was left out of this list considering it is part of North America? Even excluding Mexico City surely there are other urbanist cities on that part of the continent? From what I hear there are some really lovely cities and my experience with Mexican transit is it has better coverage than the average US city transit, and even that was in a smaller border town.

Not to mention a lot of them tend to build higher density. This is a personal anecdote but I have memories of walking with my grandfather to the grocery store and passing so many shops and neighbors which is simply not possible anywhere I have lived in the US.

Perhaps there was a lack of data, but it seems strange to not even mention 1/3 of the continent.

Edit: I hadn't watched the CityNerd before this but even he considered Mexican cities so it does feel strange.

[eCitaroFan]

I'd like to see how this top 10 would change if you'd factor Per Capita and/or housing prices into these rankings

[surge]

Wow, gotta compliment the quality of this video, just found this channel and the amount of detail, being able to see the maps and a layout of exactly where to go is really cool

[humanecities]

I was surprised Calgary even got number 20. We have a few great neighbourhoods for urbanism and a pretty well used LRT system, but the sprawl is still super rough.

Things are getting better here, though. And I think we have pretty good bones to work with. With a concerted effort, we can really make a difference in our cities.

(I guess the bar is pretty low in NA… so maybe 20th isn’t that surprising 🤣)

[iamjoestafford]

Great video - it must have involved a lot of work!

I wish someone would make a similar one about cities here in the UK. Outside London most places are utterly car reliant - we've had 60 years of car-centric planning and an almost total lack of investment in public transport, resulting in terrible traffic jams and very poor quality (sub)urban environments. Manchester and Nottingham with their tram/streetcar networks, Glasgow with its subway, Oxford and Cambridge with their cycling and Liverpool with its urban rail are real exceptions - even in large cities, most people have no option but to drive everywhere. That's why I love spending time in places like The Netherlands and Belgium - their cities are so much nicer!