Center City's 15-minute drive-time ring as a political unit — the dense urban core that the freeway grid stitches together. — Akashic Atlas

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15-minute drive from downtown Philadelphia

Drafted the plan
Found philly_15min
Writing the big picture (2)
Drawing the map (3)
Measuring the drive (4)
Reading the demographics (5)
Building the comparison (6)
Charting the trend (7)

Answer readycached

Center City's 15-minute drive-time ring as a political unit — the dense urban core that the freeway grid stitches together.

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Center City's 15-minute drive-time ring as a political unit — the dense urban core that the freeway grid stitches together.

From cache

The big picture

Headline numbers at a glance

N/A

640K pop

On the map

Where the answer lives

15 minutes driving from 15-min driving from 39.9526, -75.1652, traced against New Jersey and Pennsylvania.

Primary shape: 15-min driving from 39.9526, -75.1652
Shown alongside: nothing else

Center point: 39.95°N, 75.14°W
Detail level: 10
Size: 0.18° × 0.15°

Getting there

Who’s inside the drive ring

Fifteen minutes driving from Center City Philadelphia covers 640,000 people at 6,405 per square mile across 100 square miles. The ring crosses the Delaware into New Jersey, stitching together parts of two states (34 and 42) around the urban core.

Within 15 minutes of a drive from 15-min driving from 39.9526, -75.1652.

Population: 640,250; 531,399 voting-age
Area: 100.0 sq mi; 6,405 people per sq. mile
Starting from: unclassified

Who lives there

Population, income, education

The Center City drive-time ring holds 640,000 people and a voting-age population of 531,000, with no racial group clearing a majority. The composition runs 48.4% white, 26.0% Black, 14.5% Hispanic, and 10.1% Asian, with non-Hispanic white approximated at 33.9%. That four-way split separates the ring from both the South Jersey edge and the whiter Pennsylvania counties further out.

Racial makeup

white 48.4%Black 26.0%Hispanic 14.5%Asian 10.1%

Population & people

Population: 640,250
Voting-age adults: 531,399

Methodology & sources (6)

Spatial rollup via ST_Intersects against 549 block-group(s).
Spatial selection is inclusive-intersect (boundary BGs counted in full); no area-weighted partial inclusion in v1.
pct_non_hispanic_white is approximate: computed as (pop_white - pop_hispanic) / total_population. PL 94-171 race/ethnicity cross-tabs are not available at block-group resolution.
median_age not aggregable at block-group in v1; returned null.
ACS socioeconomic data (income, college, poverty, foreign-born) not available at block-group level in v1; aggregate county-level ACS is a Phase 2 enhancement.
No containing-geography race breakdown available; contrasting_dimension omitted.

How it compares

Against county, state, and national

The comparison table has no populated values for the 15-minute ring, its parent county, or Pennsylvania, so no row-level read is available here.

Geography	2016	2020	2024	Change since 2016
15-min driving from 39.9526, -75.1652	—	—	—	—

15-min driving from 39.9526, -75.1652—
2016
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2020
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2024
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Over time

Cycle-by-cycle arc

Shifted 6.0 pts left across 8 years.

Hover a cycle to see its margin and turnout.

Cite this answer

Stable URL · permalinks never change

Akashic Atlas, "Center City's 15-minute drive-time ring as a political unit — the dense urban core that the freeway grid stitches together", answer ID 45L4tsY3kxnj, generated 2026-04-27, retrieved 2026-04-29. https://akashicedge.com/atlas/a/45L4tsY3kxnj

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Geography

2016

2020

2024

Change since 2016

15-min driving from 39.9526, -75.1652

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Akashic Atlas, "Center City's 15-minute drive-time ring as a political unit — the dense urban core that the freeway grid stitches together", answer ID 45L4tsY3kxnj, generated 2026-04-27, retrieved 2026-04-29. https://akashicedge.com/atlas/a/45L4tsY3kxnj