We went on a trip to Iceland last week, visiting Reykjavik and Southern Iceland. Reykjavik is remarkably small for a European capital, population 122,853 (2016 source: UN). That’s smaller than the population of the suburb of Montclair, New Jersey, in which I live, plus the adjacent suburb of Clifton, NJ. Now Clifton is twice the size of Montclair, but still. Reykjavik has a population density of 510/km^2 while Montclair’s is 2,532.8/km^2. (Wikipedia is my data source for this and most other data in this article). The downtown area is low-rise with no really tall buildings. Much of the population lives in low-density suburbs. I mention this to underscore how daft the vehemently anti-suburban discourse inherent in architectural discussion is, something I’ve been harping on since the mid-1990s.
Trip Report: Iceland
Trip Report: Iceland
Trip Report: Iceland
We went on a trip to Iceland last week, visiting Reykjavik and Southern Iceland. Reykjavik is remarkably small for a European capital, population 122,853 (2016 source: UN). That’s smaller than the population of the suburb of Montclair, New Jersey, in which I live, plus the adjacent suburb of Clifton, NJ. Now Clifton is twice the size of Montclair, but still. Reykjavik has a population density of 510/km^2 while Montclair’s is 2,532.8/km^2. (Wikipedia is my data source for this and most other data in this article). The downtown area is low-rise with no really tall buildings. Much of the population lives in low-density suburbs. I mention this to underscore how daft the vehemently anti-suburban discourse inherent in architectural discussion is, something I’ve been harping on since the mid-1990s.