City Sector Model

Defining "Built-Up Urban Area"

The term urban area refers to a continuously built landmass devoted to urban development. Unlike metropolitan areas, urban areas have no rural land within their boundaries.  read more »

The November 9 edition of The Economist magazine featured an article entitled “In praise of America’s car addiction: How vehicle dependence it makes the country fairer and more efficient.”  read more »

The White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) has released a new metropolitan area delineation. Metropolitan areas are composed of counties.  read more »

The largest Central business districts (CBDs or downtowns) face a serious crisis as working from home has seriously reduced the demand for five-day on-site employment.  read more »

Let’s talk about the “urban doom loop”.

There were quite a few pundits who believed that the Covid pandemic would be the catalyst for a profound transformation of cities.  read more »

Demographia World Urban Areas contains population, land area and population density for the nearly 1,000 identified built-up urban areas in the world with 500,000 or more population. The total population of these urban areas is estimated at 2.36 billion, representing 52 percent of the world urban population as estimated by the United Nations.  read more »

Canada and the United States are among a minority of national governments that formally designate metropolitan areas. Metropolitan areas are labor and housing markets which include a core urban area (built up or developed area) as well as rural territory  read more »

Despite the continuing pressure from employers for employees to work on-site, working from home continues at a strong pace. Just released data from WFH Research indicates that 41.3% of US workers worked at home at least part of the time between March and June 2023.  read more »

After decades of self-celebration and relentless media hype, the great “urban renaissance” predicted by the New Urbanists—a vision of cities built by and for the creative class—has come crashing down.  read more »

With the COVID-19 pandemic declared over, a significant question for politicians, planners, and pundits alike is what to do with city centers and old urban cores after the pandemic pushed many Americans to move away from dense urban areas.  read more »