It’s often argued that because just 11% of England is built on, there’s plenty of room to build new houses while leaving most of the English countryside untouched. This is true (even if it does ignore the fact that the urbanising impact of development extents beyond its immediate ‘footprint’). There’s a further point worth unpacking from Professor Rae’s detailed analysis of population density. Recommended reading You’ll never guess which is the most densely populated country in Europe
#Population per square kilometre series#
The political consequences of this phenomenon are explored in ‘Blindsided’ – a special series for UnHerd from our Flyover Country editor Henry Olsen. But only 13% of them are lived in.”īy recalculating population density in each country using only the land area where people actually live he produces a measure of what he calls “lived density”.īy this yardstick, Spain’s population density leaps from 93 people per square kilometre to 737 – way above the equivalent for England and the Netherlands. From a human point of view, Spain is a densely populated country that happens to have a lot of empty countryside attached to it. Another good example is Iceland – which has a conventional population density of just 3 people per square kilometre, but a more convivial 187 when it comes to lived density.Īll of this is an object lesson in the way the statistics can be demonstrably ‘true’ and yet completely misleading as to how people actually experience their lives. “Spain contains within it more than 505,000 1km squares. “…Yet characterising Spain as a sparsely populated country does not reflect the experience on the ground – as anyone who knows Barcelona or Madrid can tell you. This is borne out in the map, where much of Spain appears to be empty much more so than any other large European country. It has a population density of 93 people per km², giving the impression of a sparsely populated country. “A good way to understand this measure is to look at Spain. This is how he puts his case in a thought provoking piece for the Conversation: Or does it? Rae’s insight is that the Spanish population isn’t spread out over Spain, but rather a small part of it. Rae may be a professor of urban studies and planning at Sheffield University, but how can he possibly be right? Spain’s population is smaller than England’s, while it’s geographical area is almost four times bigger. To give you an idea of how NYC’s density stacks up against similarly sized (in terms of population) cities, we took a look at six other urban centers with populations over 8 million.And yet according to Alasdair Rae, the true answer is Spain. These maps can be used to help city planners and politicians understand city growth and find solutions for more effective management to minimize the negative impacts of overcrowding, stress, and pollution. The red spikes represent density in the city and the grey shows density outside the city limits. The lower the density with larger footprints, the more sprawl. The higher the density, the more urban infrastructure is needed. The diagrams represent the average “ambient population density” over a 24-hour period. In May, we highlighted the hypnotic, pulsating Manhattan Population Explorer map which efficiently and effectively showed how the New York City population doubles during the day with commuters and tourists. The Cities Urban Age Program’s diagrams are similar in that they visually demonstrate the density of cities based on the number of people living and working in a square kilometer (100×100 kilometers).
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