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Message no. 1
From: Arcady arcady@***.net
Subject: Seattle Population problem
Date: Mon, 23 Aug 1999 13:07:42 +700
Has anyone else noticed that Seattle's population is just way too small for the
given land space?

They've only got 3 million people in there and it's supposed to be a big sprawl?


Seattle is about 40 miles from 'Downtown' to downtown puyulup. Pulling that
out we could say the sprawl is about (very roughly) 60 miles by 80-90 miles.
About half the size of the modern day San Francisco Bay Area (which clocks in
around 6 million somewhere. http://www.abag.ca.gov/bayarea/census90/pickhtml.html
)

I've also lived in a city 1/4 it's size and over 3 times it's population today,
in the modern world:

http://www.metro.seoul.kr/eng/smg/statistics/1997/population.html
http://www.metro.seoul.kr/eng/smg/map/map2.html

Seattle's supposed to be a sprawl with tiny apartments and people packed into
coffin hotels and stuffed together in the streets. Like in that picture in the
back of SR3 that shows the middle part of a woman smoking looking out of her
window onto a crowded street below where we can find among other things a big
troll with an axe. (what page was that?). That by the way is about how crowded
it is in modern day Seoul. And they still have room for three or more bedroom
apartments and so on.

Seattle 2060's population should be ten times what it's listed at. In order
to get the density of a sprawl.

Arcady Resume: http://resumes.dice.com/arcady <0){{{{><
Art: http://elfwood.lysator.liu.se/lothlorien/artists/brianfw/brianfw.html
/.)\ Projects: http://www.geocities.com/TimesSquare/Portal/1865/
\(@/ Homepage: http://www.jps.net/arcady/
Message no. 2
From: Barbie Levile barbie@********.de
Subject: Seattle Population problem
Date: Mon, 23 Aug 1999 22:42:39 +0200
Arcady wrote:
>
> Seattle 2060's population should be ten times what it's listed at. In order
> to get the density of a sprawl.
>
yup, I said that years ago.
At least 10 times

--
Barbie

"One World, One Web, One Program" - Microsoft Promotional Ad
"Ein Volk, Ein Reich, Ein Führer" - Adolf Hitler

barbie@********.de
http://www.amigaworld.com/barbie/index.html

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Message no. 3
From: Arcady arcady@***.net
Subject: Seattle Population problem
Date: Mon, 23 Aug 1999 14:25:36 +700
>Arcady wrote:
>>
>> Seattle 2060's population should be ten times what it's listed at. In order

>> to get the density of a sprawl.
>>
>yup, I said that years ago.
>At least 10 times

Even better, from 2050 to 2060 the population did not change by one single person.
Nor did the economic breakdowns or metahuman percentages. Despite the very high
Ork birth rate and earlier maturation.

Arcady Resume: http://resumes.dice.com/arcady <0){{{{><
Art: http://elfwood.lysator.liu.se/lothlorien/artists/brianfw/brianfw.html
/.)\ Projects: http://www.geocities.com/TimesSquare/Portal/1865/
\(@/ Homepage: http://www.jps.net/arcady/
Message no. 4
From: Bull bull@*******.net
Subject: Seattle Population problem
Date: Mon, 23 Aug 1999 17:50:34 -0400 (EDT)
At 02:25 PM 8/23/99 +700, Arcady wrote these timeless words:
>>Arcady wrote:
>>>
>>> Seattle 2060's population should be ten times what it's listed at. In
order
>
>>> to get the density of a sprawl.
>>>
>>yup, I said that years ago.
>>At least 10 times
>
>Even better, from 2050 to 2060 the population did not change by one single
person.
>Nor did the economic breakdowns or metahuman percentages. Despite the very
high
>Ork birth rate and earlier maturation.
>
And all those early Ork deaths.

One thing that no one has mentioned yet and I feel has a HUGE impact on the
numbers and stuff is that, simply put, the numbers are the registered,
lawfullly SINned metahumans in the sprawl.

Double those numbers, at least, for the sinless population.

And of course, do those numbers reflect Seattle residents, or everyone
living in Seattle? The corps have Extraterritoritality (Or however the
frag you spell that), so do they report their figures? And of course, are
they accurately reporting their numbers if they do?

Keep in mind that in SR, the most important factor (For us gamers, at
least) is a factor that rarely gets counted: The Shadow population. This
is not to say there are millions of Shadowrunners, but... There are easily
milliions of SINless and homeless out there.

This is the same factor that gets missed when people talk about how common
"Magically Active" characters and NPCs are in a Shadowrun game, compared to
their numbers (1 out of 10,000 people is a FULL Mage or PhysAd), or the
percentage of Metahumans. In the shadows, the averages are seriously skewed.

Bull (Who never bothered with numbers anyways. If it makes sense for the
story, frag the numbers :))
--
Bull -- The Best Ork Decker You Never Met
bull@*******.net ===== bull22@***********.com
http://shadowrun.html.com/users/bull
ICQ: 35931890
====================================================== =
= Order is Illusion! Chaos is Bliss! Got any Fours? = =
======================================================
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-- Greg Proops, "Vs."
Message no. 5
From: Ereskanti@***.com Ereskanti@***.com
Subject: Seattle Population problem
Date: Mon, 23 Aug 1999 19:11:21 EDT
In a message dated 8/23/1999 3:08:29 PM US Eastern Standard Time,
arcady@***.net writes:

>
> Seattle 2060's population should be ten times what it's listed at. In order
> to get the density of a sprawl.

-OR- you can also remember there are large sections of the Seattle region
that are uninhabitable as well (Redmond Barrens, Payullup Barrens, Lake
District, the resorts in/around Cougar Mountain).

-K
Message no. 6
From: Arcady arcady@***.net
Subject: Seattle Population problem
Date: Mon, 23 Aug 1999 16:27:07 +700
>> Seattle 2060's population should be ten times what it's listed at. In order

>> to get the density of a sprawl.
>
>-OR- you can also remember there are large sections of the Seattle region

>that are uninhabitable as well (Redmond Barrens, Payullup Barrens, Lake
>District, the resorts in/around Cougar Mountain).
>

Yes, but even accounting for that it should be 10 times what it is. After all
the figures in the book are broken down by region and thus already account for
this.

Seattle downtown is larger than modern day San Francisco by almost twice the
size and yet has 200 thousand less people.

Corporate extrateritoritality will only grab a few execs per company out of
the population figures. And even that only in the case of a small handful of
AAA and AA corps. The vast number of people on the streets who work for a company
are still SIN-ed UCAS citizens. And the SIN-less population is only going to
add so much. I believe the figures in the books claim to account for them to
some extent.

So they end up being drastically odd figures considering that the city describes
itself as being crowded. If we assume those figures are correct then Seattle
2060 should resemble the neighborhood that Beaver of Leave it to Beaver lived
in on the show (ie, 1950's American Suburbs. Big spacious houses with large
front and back yards).

Arcady Resume: http://resumes.dice.com/arcady <0){{{{><
Art: http://elfwood.lysator.liu.se/lothlorien/artists/brianfw/brianfw.html
/.)\ Projects: http://www.geocities.com/TimesSquare/Portal/1865/
\(@/ Homepage: http://www.jps.net/arcady/
Message no. 7
From: Ereskanti@***.com Ereskanti@***.com
Subject: Seattle Population problem
Date: Tue, 24 Aug 1999 01:47:03 EDT
In a message dated 8/23/1999 6:27:58 PM US Eastern Standard Time,
arcady@***.net writes:

> Yes, but even accounting for that it should be 10 times what it is. After
all
> the figures in the book are broken down by region and thus already account
> for this.

To an extent, you are correct of course.

> Seattle downtown is larger than modern day San Francisco by almost twice
the
> size and yet has 200 thousand less people.

Hmmm...are you using the figures from CalFree or NAGtRL for this?

> Corporate extrateritoritality will only grab a few execs per company out of
> the population figures. And even that only in the case of a small handful
of
> AAA and AA corps. The vast number of people on the streets who work for a
> company
> are still SIN-ed UCAS citizens. And the SIN-less population is only going
to
> add so much. I believe the figures in the books claim to account for them
to
> some extent.

After looking again at the books, yes, you are correct here as well.

> So they end up being drastically odd figures considering that the city
> describes
> itself as being crowded. If we assume those figures are correct then
Seattle
> 2060 should resemble the neighborhood that Beaver of Leave it to Beaver
> lived
> in on the show (ie, 1950's American Suburbs. Big spacious houses with large
> front and back yards).

Hmmm...NO!!! Not even close in this case. Take into account a couple of
things here as well.

Redmond and Payullup are both IMMENSE zones with vastly less dense population
centers. Actually, if you take the old Seattle Sourcebook out, you will find
that combined they account for nearly 15% of the overall Seattle "Sprawl"
area.

Second, Council Island is much less dense than the surrounding areas as well
due to NAN/Salish controls.

Third, and this one is going to sound odd probably, but a large portion of
the Seattle region is relatively uninhabited due to the geography of the
area. Numerous ravines and smaller lakes dot the area.

Fourth, and again, this one is going to odd as well. The material is *dense*
by *AMERICAN* standards. I think anyone who came from Europe or East-Asia
would admit that though americans claim they are "crowded", they are in fact
spoiled to death with space. Cities and other populated regions are spread
out much wider on a person-per-acreage than in non-north american centers.
The people who wrote the initial material were writing it from their own
perspective. From a non-american viewpoint, the descrips for Seattle are
incredibly dense.

Fifth, see all those construction, industrial, and corporate areas on the
map? Don't forget to add not one, but three military control areas, and that
space in/around the Seattle Sprawl begins to vanish really quickly. In the
US (and likely the UCAS), there are certain strictures in place concerning
zoning operations with regards to manufacturing facilities. There has to
often be "x" amount of space between heavy industry locations and the actual
buildings themselves. Hence, vast areas of fenced in, often very open and
empty, ground. Case in point would be the Alcoa operations (extrusions)
facility here in Lafayette. HUGE place with not two or three, but SIX times
more space inside its' fence than the plant itself. Another comparison would
be the Catepillar plant (Power Plants). They have a several hundred acre
plot of land they keep on three sides of themselves that they aren't going to
be turning over for anything. What do they do with it? They hire some goofy
farmer to come in and tend the land, growing corn usually. Yep, this land is
now near one of the fastest grown areas of the city and surrounded literally
by anything from housing developments to major retail centers and radio/TV
operations.

So, by a european or east-asian standpoint, you are probably very accurate in
your comparison. By an american standpoint...many people would be feeling
very claustrophobic.

-K (who doesn't even want to contend with the considerations of the
"unmentioned" populations under the stealthy operations of the corporations
or by the "Ork/Dwarven Undergrounds").
Message no. 8
From: Rori Steel cullyn@*****.com.au
Subject: Seattle Population problem
Date: Tue, 24 Aug 1999 09:55:37 +0000 (GMT)
On Mon, 23 Aug 1999 17:50:34 -0400 (EDT), Bull wrote:

>One thing that no one has mentioned yet and I feel has a HUGE impact on the
>numbers and stuff is that, simply put, the numbers are the registered,
>lawfullly SINned metahumans in the sprawl.
>Double those numbers, at least, for the sinless population.

Something else to consider... Who brings out the figures we read?
Not in RL but the SR world... Statistics are used by Gov and Corp
types to justify anything they like. And a corp that wanted to take 4
blocks of land could use figures like the ones we read to make that
happen.

And dont forget 43.7% of all statistics are made up on the spot *grin*

Another thing is that trying to predict the future is like trying to
stick your foot in your mouth. It is soo easy to be way way way off..
even using everything at your desposal...

Taking in every factor that has been brought up on this thread... i'd
say the numbers are totally reasonable :>

Then again... im a wageslave anyway....

Cullyn
(Who thinks that these bracket things are cool.. and may get one soon)
Message no. 9
From: Gurth gurth@******.nl
Subject: Seattle Population problem
Date: Tue, 24 Aug 1999 16:32:20 +0200
According to Ereskanti@***.com, at 1:47 on 24 Aug 99, the word on
the street was...

> > Seattle downtown is larger than modern day San Francisco by almost twice the
> > size and yet has 200 thousand less people.
>
> Hmmm...are you using the figures from CalFree or NAGtRL for this?

I think what he is comparing, are the population figures from the Seattle
Sourcebook/New Seattle with current (late 1990s) values for San Francisco.

> > So they end up being drastically odd figures considering that the city
> > describes
> > itself as being crowded. If we assume those figures are correct then
> > Seattle
> > 2060 should resemble the neighborhood that Beaver of Leave it to Beaver
> > lived
> > in on the show (ie, 1950's American Suburbs. Big spacious houses with large
> > front and back yards).
>
> Hmmm...NO!!! Not even close in this case. Take into account a couple of
> things here as well.
>
> Redmond and Payullup are both IMMENSE zones with vastly less dense population
> centers. Actually, if you take the old Seattle Sourcebook out, you will find
> that combined they account for nearly 15% of the overall Seattle "Sprawl"
> area.

Redmond and Puyallup combined are 1,444 square kilometers, according to
the Seattle Sourcebook, and they have a population of 1,004,000 SINners.
That's 695 per km^2. The rest of the Seattle Metroplex has 2,102,000
SINners on 2,548 km^2, or 825/km^2.

(For comparison, the modern-day US has about 28 people per km^2, but
that's an average for the whole country. Unfortunately, I don't have any
values for modern cities, except for Monaco, which I doubt is
representative -- 32,000 people on 1.95 km^2.)

Judging by these figures, the Barrens are actually _less_ densely
populated than the rest of Seattle. However, the SINless population is
lacking from these figures, and if that's assumed to be higher in the
Barrens than in the rest of the city, my guess is the two would probably
even out to roughly the same values.

> Second, Council Island is much less dense than the surrounding areas as
> well due to NAN/Salish controls.

Well, yes, but 3,000 people on 25 km^2 don't make that much of a
difference to 3,106,000 people on almost 3,992 km^2.

> Third, and this one is going to sound odd probably, but a large portion of
> the Seattle region is relatively uninhabited due to the geography of the
> area. Numerous ravines and smaller lakes dot the area.

It doesn't sound odd, and it makes a lot of sense. But (IMHO) it's not as
if the largest part of the land can't be built upon. I also have a feeling
that the area values quoted in the Seattle Sourcebook don't include the
surface area of Lake Washington.

> Fourth, and again, this one is going to odd as well. The material is
> *dense* by *AMERICAN* standards. I think anyone who came from Europe or
> East-Asia would admit that though americans claim they are "crowded",
> they are in fact spoiled to death with space. Cities and other
> populated regions are spread out much wider on a person-per-acreage than
> in non-north american centers.

Definitely. As another comparison, I mentioned above that the US has 28
people per square kilometer, on average; here in the Netherlands, it's
459... American cities, from what I've seen, are built so large that if
we'd build the same here, the whole country would probably be filled and
still not everyone would have a house to live in.

> The people who wrote the initial material were writing it from their own
> perspective. From a non-american viewpoint, the descrips for Seattle are
> incredibly dense.

Don't you mean it the other way around? In the first part of your
paragraph, you say that American cities are much more spacious than many
Americans think they are, and then you say that they appear spacious to
_Americans_. Something doesn't quite add up...?

--
Gurth@******.nl - http://www.xs4all.nl/~gurth/index.html
De plaag is terug...!
-> NAGEE Editor * ShadowRN GridSec * Unofficial Shadowrun Guru <-
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Message no. 10
From: arcady@***.net arcady@***.net
Subject: Seattle Population problem
Date: Tue, 24 Aug 1999 09:53:01 +700
>> Seattle downtown is larger than modern day San Francisco by almost twice
the
>> size and yet has 200 thousand less people.
>
>Hmmm...are you using the figures from CalFree or NAGtRL for this?

Neither. My comparrison is modern day San Francisco. Which is were I live. Compare
it to the maps in the Seattle book, which can be overlayed with a map of modern
day Seattle to see where it's bigger and thus calculate it's size. 2060 Seattle
downtown is much larger than 1999 San Francisco.

1999 San Francisco has about 700 thousand people. 2060 Seattle had I believe
500-600 thousand. For it to be as dense as 1999 San Francisco is it would need
about 1.5 million. In downtown Seattle 2060 (which is located where 1999 Seattle
city is).

>> 2060 should resemble the neighborhood that Beaver of Leave it to Beaver
lived
>> in on the show (ie, 1950's American Suburbs. Big spacious houses with large

>> front and back yards).
>
>Hmmm...NO!!! Not even close in this case. Take into account a couple of

>things here as well.
>
>Redmond and Payullup are both IMMENSE zones with vastly less dense population

>centers. Actually, if you take the old Seattle Sourcebook out, you will find

>that combined they account for nearly 15% of the overall Seattle "Sprawl"

>area.

Yes they do. And they have large unusable areas. But they also have large usable
areas. And these areas are still underpopulated for the assumed density. Everyone
always seems to forget that there is an actual Puyullup City proper which is
of a decent size and is where most of the people in the Puyullup district live.
Redmond is not so centralized in it's population, but it too has a similar issue.
It has many highly habited zones spread throughout it's space taking up most
of the land mass.

>Fourth, and again, this one is going to odd as well. The material is *dense*

>by *AMERICAN* standards. I think anyone who came from Europe or East-Asia


Actually it isn't even that. It's less dense than 1999 New York, Boston, or
San Francisco. Probably LA as well but I can't be sure as LA does take up an
obscenely immense amount of land space.

>Fifth, see all those construction, industrial, and corporate areas on the

>map? Don't forget to add not one, but three military control areas, and that

>space in/around the Seattle Sprawl begins to vanish really quickly. In the


Not really. San Francisco has 3 bases, the largest urban park in North America,
LOTS of construction, and tons of industrial and corporate structures. Yet we
still pack in 700k people in a small pennensula and have much larger housing
than is Suggested by books like Sprawl Sites and have more people in less space
than 2060 Seattle downtown.

>
>So, by a european or east-asian standpoint, you are probably very accurate
in
>your comparison. By an american standpoint...many people would be feeling

>very claustrophobic.

Not even. It's less dense than a large percentage of modern day USA's major
cities.
Message no. 11
From: Arcady arcady@***.net
Subject: Seattle Population problem
Date: Tue, 24 Aug 1999 11:47:35 +700
>According to Ereskanti@***.com, at 1:47 on 24 Aug 99, the word on
>the street was...
>
>> > Seattle downtown is larger than modern day San Francisco by almost twice
the
>> > size and yet has 200 thousand less people.
>>
>> Hmmm...are you using the figures from CalFree or NAGtRL for this?
>
>I think what he is comparing, are the population figures from the Seattle

>Sourcebook/New Seattle with current (late 1990s) values for San Francisco.


Yep.


>(For comparison, the modern-day US has about 28 people per km^2, but
>that's an average for the whole country. Unfortunately, I don't have any
>values for modern cities, except for Monaco, which I doubt is
>representative -- 32,000 people on 1.95 km^2.)

Yes. And 80-90% of the USA is uninhabbited wilderness (forest/desert/plains
or whatever). If you restricted the rating to the north-east coast you'd have
a figure close to what you'd get for most of Europe. If you restricted it to
cities you'd still have a much higher number than that 28. Probably in the hundreds
somewhere.

But what I see when I look at Seattle 2060 is these descriptions of having to
live in tiny aprtments. Ones that are smaller than what the people in Seoul
have today in 1999 (Seoul is the most dense city in the world. Even denser than
Hong Kong). And if not apartments then coffin hotels. So it should be an ultra
dense city.
But the figures don't match up. I compare it to one of the modern USA's dense
cities (San Francisco) and it's way off. In fact it compares better to cities
in central california or Arizona and other places were wide open space is the
rule of the day.

For a place that is described as an ultra dense urban sprawl with jam packed
housing it sure has a low population and a large amount of space.


Arcady Resume: http://resumes.dice.com/arcady <0){{{{><
Art: http://elfwood.lysator.liu.se/lothlorien/artists/brianfw/brianfw.html
/.)\ Projects: http://www.geocities.com/TimesSquare/Portal/1865/
\(@/ Homepage: http://www.jps.net/arcady/

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