Standard population density maps are colored but flat, so it’s hard to know how dense one area really is compared to another. While the spread of humanity may not be surprising, these maps break down population density into spikes—the larger the spike, the greater the volume of people living in an area—that offer a fascinating visual assessment of how whereby humans congregate along coastlines near water in North and South America, Europe, Asia, and Australia, due to a long-standing preference since humans evolved from ocean organisms.
These maps are unique in that they do not show any drawn boundaries between states in the Americas or between nations in Europe, Asia, and Africa. Instead, they rely on population growth to reveal the most fascinating aspects of human migration and settlement worldwide.
The maps’ creator Alasdair Rae, a former professor of urban studies and planning at the University of Sheffield, told DailyMail.com: “In a way these graphics are blindingly obvious, they tell us what we know, but it’s a slightly different way of seeing the world . It’s interesting and it’s also quite enjoyable – part science, part fun and part art.”
On the larger world map, each pin represents an area of two square kilometers, or about 1.24 miles. On the map of the United States as well as on the maps of Europe, Asia and Australia, each pin is 1 square kilometer or about 0.62 miles. Although we use miles in the US, the scientific community widely uses kilometers for this kind of information, so Rae stuck with that.
“Wherever there is water on Earth, you find life as we know it,” said astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, and these epic data visualizations lend credence to his statement.
America’s population density can be thought of as a westward settlement, but mostly as a result of large mega-regions that have developed around concentrated cities and suburbs over time and, when added together, make up about 60 percent of the of the country’s total population. 329.5 million
AMERICA: On the US map, each pin is 1 square kilometer or 0.62 miles and there are no boundaries between states. The eastern half of America is much more densely populated than the western half, and the densely populated East Coast cities of Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and Washington, DC are shown on the right
BIG CITY: “It’s impossible to go from Boston to Washington, D.C. without feeling like it’s a giant city,” Rae said. The Northeast Corridor, pictured above in the image created exclusively for DailyMail.com, is home to 51 million people and 15% of the US population, living in Washington, D.C., Philadelphia, New York and Boston, and is an excellent example of what the French geographer Jean Gottman called a “megalopolis” in his book of the same name
“It’s impossible to go from Boston to Washington, D.C. without feeling like it’s a giant city,” he said. “But you have California, where you go from San Francisco to Los Angeles and there’s a lot of open space.”
French geographer Jean Gottman recognized the mega-region trend early in his 1961 book Megalopolis: The Urbanized Northeastern Seaboard of the United States.
Demographers are always asked: how many people live in Boston or Columbus, Ohio? But their answer is often quite disturbing to the average person who is just curious about population density. Their response is something along the lines of: What do you mean by Boston or Columbus?
“This kind of map doesn’t pay attention to where the administrative boundaries of certain cities are,” Rae pointed out.
For example, Chicago has a jagged, jagged boundary and is home to over 2.7 million residents, but the greater Cook Country metropolitan area has over 9.5 million people. Atlanta is similar, with a city population of about 500,000 and the greater metro area home to 6 million people.
“We’re used to seeing maps with boundaries, and sometimes that makes sense,” said Rae, who shares the finished images on his blog. “There are no boundaries on purpose [between states or nations] in it to see where people are in a larger area.”
NORTH AMERICA: Standard population density maps are colored but flat, so it’s hard to know how dense one area really is compared to another. While the spread of population may not be surprising, these maps break down population density into spikes – the larger the spike, the greater the volume of people living in an area
EASTERN US: America’s population density can be seen as a westward settlement, but mostly as a result of large mega-regions that have developed around concentrated cities and suburbs over time and, when their population is added , make up about 60 percent of the country’s population. total population of 329.5 million. One sees dense areas in Florida in the foreground on the left and also in the northeast corridor
GLOBAL VIEW: The image above created by Rae shows where the world’s population lives – with each pin representing 1 square kilometer. Although there are no boundaries between nations, it is quite clear which areas are inhabited by people
Rae said the maps were born out of scientific curiosity sparked in part by an academic paper he wrote a few years ago about population density. This interest, combined with extra time during the Covid lockdown and a new computer dedicated to fast composite graphics, led him to start producing the fascinating images from the European Union’s Global Human Settlement Layer data.
It starts the process by downloading a large, compressed image file – the whole world is about 700MB – this is just black and white. Rae then opens it up using a free, open source software tool called Aerialod that allows him to start experimenting with the images by adding colors, resizing the spikes, adding different shadows to highlight dense areas even more, etc. .
“I can choose how high I make the spikes, but it’s all related to each other,” Ray said, adding that the population figures come from satellite data cross-referenced with census data. “So no matter what I do, if I make New York 5 kilometers (3.11 miles) tall, everything else will scale proportionally.”
But there is a limit to what Rae or anyone can do with the files.
“If you wanted to show every little town, you’d have to make New York so big it would be off the screen. Unless you have a screen a mile wide, some parts can’t really be seen or you have to strain your eye to see them.’
Graphics put together by blogger Tim Urban show that every person on Earth (as of 2015) could fit in the five boroughs of New York City if they stood shoulder to shoulder (left), and that the world’s population could fit inside a very large cube measuring 0.67 miles placed in the middle of Manhattan (right)
Traditional flat maps that use colors to depict different areas and how they have been inhabited can be quite deceptive.
“If you look at Denver or Boston — within those city limits there are probably similar sized populations,” Ray said.
In terms of population within city limits, Boston is over 689,000 and Denver is over 715,000.
“But Denver is surrounded by not much compared to the Boson, which is part of the larger metropolitan area of about 8 million people. On a 3D map you can see that you’ve gone from Boston to Stanford, Connecticut and all the way to Maine — you can see that it’s part of a much larger urban area,” Ray explained. “Denver is like a beacon in the middle of what feels like a void.”
While places like New York, London, Paris and Singapore certainly feel extremely crowded, especially on mass transit during rush hour, a 2015 analysis by Tim Urban of the blog Wait But Why showed that the world’s population could fit standing shoulder to shoulder. the five boroughs of New York.
Urban claims you can fit 1,000 people standing next to each other in a 10-by-10-meter (32-by-32-foot) square.
Of this, Manhattan could accommodate 590 million people. Brooklyn could hold 1.38 billion, Queens could hold 2.83 billion, the Bronx could hold 1.09 billion, and Staten Island could hold 1.51 billion.
Urban also calculated how large a building would be needed to accommodate the world’s population, and concluded that everyone alive at the time could fit into a giant cube where each side was 0.67 miles—but only if he stood very close to each others, stacked like toy figures.
Urban’s cube image shows the Empire State Building and Burj Khalifa for scale.
“I find these very useful to just understand the densities that some people live in – the New York example is just, it’s really good because it makes you think about how much space people take up, but then how much space is really needed to provide everything we need,” Rae said of Tim Urban’s visuals.
GREAT LAKES: The Great Lakes are an important settlement point for people and this is reflected above where you can see large concentrations in Midwestern cities like Milwaukee, Cleveland, Chicago and Detroit. Rae said the maps were born out of scientific curiosity sparked in part by an academic paper he wrote a few years ago about population density
All state-of-the-art maps show real-world population variations and settlement patterns in a tantalizing way that standard ones don’t quite capture.
“You don’t have the same level of nuance with a flat map compared to edge maps,” Rae said. “There’s a lot of this data around, but it takes some manipulation and skill to turn it into something that hopefully makes sense.”
Seeing the…
