As it turns out, you can gauge the population density of a city just by looking at the distribution of public libraries. This, of course, assumes that cities offer roughly the same number of libraries per capita, which may not be perfectly...
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As it turns out, you can gauge the population density of a city just by looking at the distribution of public libraries.  This, of course, assumes that cities offer roughly the same number of libraries per capita, which may not be perfectly consistent.  Regardless, for these five cities – the largest in the US – the distribution of public libraries does a decent job of outlining the city boundaries and acting as a proxy for the urban density.  No statistical analysis here – the maps are just meant to be visually engaging…

Data sources:

Chicago: https://data.cityofchicago.org/Education/Libraries-Locations-Hours-and-Contact-Information/x8fc-8rcq

Los Angeles: https://data.lacity.org/A-Livable-and-Sustainable-City/Library-Branches/a4nt-4gca

New York City: http://www.nypl.org/locations/

Houston: http://houstonlibrary.org/find-it/find-library-location

Philadelphia: https://libwww.freelibrary.org/branches/branchmap.cfm

When it comes to naming streets, cities frequently use the default suffix: St. If they’re feeling a tad adventurous, maybe they’ll thrown in an Ave or Dr. If they’re really thinking outside the box, perhaps they’ll come up with a Ter or Cir. It can...
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When it comes to naming streets, cities frequently use the default suffix: St. If they’re feeling a tad adventurous, maybe they’ll thrown in an Ave or Dr. If they’re really thinking outside the box, perhaps they’ll come up with a Ter or Cir. It can get pretty crazy.

To put this all into perspective, I’ve plotted the suffix distributions as a percentage of all streets for six cities. Because I was concerned with naming conventions, street length is not considered; a street that is two blocks long holds the same weight as one that is five blocks. Congratulations to Chicago for having more avenues than streets!

Data sources:

https://data.cityofchicago.org/Transportation/Chicago-Street-Names/i6bp-fvbx

https://data.lacity.org/A-Livable-and-Sustainable-City/Street-Names/hntu-mwxc

https://data.nola.gov/Geographic-Reference/NOLA-Master-Street-List-DRAFT/j4pt-mz93

https://data.cityofnewyork.us/City-Government/CSCL-PUB-Centerline/exjm-f27b

http://www.opendataphilly.org/opendata/resource/39/street-centerlines/

https://data.sfgov.org/Geographic-Locations-and-Boundaries/Street-Names/6d9h-4u5v