| population | area (km^2) | density (per km^2) | |
|---|---|---|---|
| japan | 127 million | 374,000 | 340 |
| us | 300 million | 9 million | 31 |
| tokyo | 12 million | 2,000 | 5,796 (13,000 in the "special wards") |
| new york | 8 million | 785 | 10,000 |
All of which is to say that I really want to go to Tokyo sometime and see all this density in action (although Wikipedia claims New York's densest area (Manhattan, duh) has 25,000 people per km^2, exceeding Nakano's 20,000). I'm pretty content with my small patch of land in New York (less to clean!), but I'm not sure I'd be happy with something too much smaller.
Speaking of cities, I'm enjoying paging through The Works in random moments. Thanks, peopleatworkwhorecommendedit!
Keep in mind that a lot of Japan is uninhabitable due to tall mountains. Check out the satellite photos of Tokyo on gmaps sometime -- you'll see it reaches into the valleys of the mountains but not beyond.
ReplyDeleteThe beautiful/crazy things about the density of Tokyo, having spent six months there and three days in New York:
- You can go up into a tall building and the city and tall buildings just go on as far as you can see in every direction.
- The roads are totally nonsensical and a joy to walk along, often just wide enough for a single car.
- They have multiple competing transit systems, which means they accept different types of passes and charge different fares but also that the coverage is amazing.
- There are hundreds of tiny buildings each overflowing and on top of one another, and you'll find good restaurants going down staircases in alleys simply because of the density.
Hi Kushal, I read your blog on a whim, population density is really interesting. Did you know if the US had the same pop. density as India it would have something like 6 billion ppl, it is interesting to calculate that from the wikipedia pages.
ReplyDelete