Is it possible that the highest density doesn’t always indicate a city’s downtown district?

We expected to find downtown Irving within the top five densest census tracts based on total buildable, but to my dismay, downtown Irving was not one of them. It was troublesome because we wanted a data-driven way of determining any city’s downtown location. 

Why isn’t Irving’s downtown in the densest census tract?

Irving’s downtown is not very dense and is mainly zoned industrial. On the other hand, Las Colinas, a neighborhood within Irving, is denser and has more of a downtown feel. I found an article from The Dallas Morning News titled “Las Colina’s Urban Center was Planned to rival downtown Dallas in the 1970s.”

If Las Colinas is a worthy rival of Downtown Dallas, then Downtown Irving  had no chance. 

Two exciting concepts: 1) develop ideas that match the most prominent rival, and it might beat everyone else. And 2) the Deepblocks algorithm for finding tracts with the highest density might work as an investment tool. 

From what we’ve learned, I would invest in Las Colinas instead of downtown.