File talk:Petrol use urban density.svg

Also, what are the units on the vertical axis? 80,000 what, for instance?

Image is flat out wrong. New York has a higher density than London by twice.


 * I think the author used metropolitan areas rather than city proper. But I think it's an unfair comparison, because metropolitan areas in the US are much looser than the defintion for the London metropolitan area, let alone Greater London. Historically the US used CSAs rather than MSAs which is an even looser definition. Hypertall (talk) 22:58, 24 March 2010 (UTC)


 * I only converted the image from jpg to svg. Please refer to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image_talk:Revised_petrol_use_urban_density.JPG on the merits of using a different graph/data (like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Revised_petrol_use_urban_density.JPG). Also, perhaps put your comments on the discussion page and actually sign them? Hohum (talk) 23:11, 25 June 2008 (UTC)

I don't think this was satisfactorily addressed in the old file's discussion. The final discussion seems to be "they used arbitrary definitions of the borders of the cities, at least in the case of LA and New York". To me that seems like using whatever data they have to to prove their point. I don't think this chart should be included in its current form. Maybe if some explanation were given, like why Los Angeles is "denser" than New York. However, the talk on the other page makes it seem that this was a very controversial study back in 1989. Is that really appropriate for a Wikipedia article? Also, the lack of units for petroleum consumed is a glaring oversight. TastyCakes (talk) 21:31, 3 March 2009 (UTC)


 * ive removed it, like i said in the discussion on the article itself, if you want it back on the article, make it right with proper data BBnet3000 (talk) 00:23, 22 July 2009 (UTC)

Missleading groupings
It's quite absurd that a sample of one, Toronto, is used to lend the name "Canada", to a grouping on the graph. Canadian cities show substantial variation in density, from the ultra-sprawl of Edmonton to the European-like density of Vancouver (see Vancouverism). I would imagine they also vary substantially in their use of energy. --Kevlar (talk • contribs) 04:16, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

Dubious numbers
I find the author's numbers to be dubious. He considers Toronto to have a significantly greater population density than New York, but that's not true either when you compare city proper or their metropolitan areas. Metropolitan area definitions in the US encompass entire counties and cover more area than Canadian definitions, but even if you compare the New York-Northern New Jersey-Long Island NY-NJ-PA MSA (density 2838 sq mi) vs. the Greater Toronto Area (2019.9 sq mi), New York is denser. If you use New York-Newark-Bridgeport, NY-NJ-CT-PA CSA, the density is 1877.4 sq mi, while Toronto's Golden Horseshoe has density 664.8 sq mi.

I think the author got his results by comparing tight metropolitan area definitions from other countries with American definitions that include many rural areas. I don't have a copy of the book but I'd like to see where he got his numbers from. I think he's not making fair comparisons. Hypertall (talk) 23:03, 24 March 2010 (UTC)


 * I only converted the image to SVG, but it says the original data is from: ( Hohum   @ ) 23:56, 24 March 2010 (UTC)