LA and the urban West not so sprawling after all

Something that most urban scholars, especially those living and working in the far West, have known for some time, cities in California and its fast-growing neighboring states are some of the most densely populated areas of the country. This is a point I recently made for Orange County, and an article in the Washington Post has now extended the idea further. Examination of Census 2000 data that limits the analysis to "urbanized area" only (i.e., factoring out all of the rural land that surrounds major cities even though it lies within official "metropolitan" counties) reveals that the three most densely populated urban regions in the country are in California: LA/OC #1, SF/Oakland #2, San Jose #3. New York comes in only at fourth. While only San Francisco has a densely populated traditional core in the same league as Manhattan, a physical geography constrained by water supplies and mountains has combined in California with never-ending immigration and population growth to make for extremely dense "suburban" communities. While counter to conventional wisdom that posits a crowded East in contrast to a sprawling West, these Census data wouldn't be too much of a surprise to anyone looking for affordable housing or space on the freeway on a stereotypically sunny California afternoon. Here's the rest of the complete list of ten most densely populated urbanized areas, which includes six in California and another two in the neighboring West. 1. LA/OC 2. SF/Oakland 3. San Jose 4. New York - Newark 5. New Orleans 6. Davis, CA 7. Vallejo, CA 8. Honolulu 9. Tracy, CA 10. Las Vegas