Unsurprisingly these cities have the highest rates of transport energy use and carbon emissions in the world. There are many examples of huge urban regions at very low densities, most evidently in the USA with metro regions such as Atlanta and Houston. The richest large western cities, like London, Paris, New York and San Francisco are also relatively high density and intensifying.Īnother important aspect of density is its relationship with travel demand and energy use. Singapore, Hong Kong and Seoul combine extremely high densities with very high levels of prosperity. The highest density cities in the world are in South and South East Asia, such as Mumbai, Dhaka and Manila (note this depends how density is measured- see the Analysis page).īut these cities are more prosperous than neighbouring rural areas, and high densities can also be linked to affluence. Higher population densities are also more prevalent in the Global South, as in poorer countries transport infrastructure is less developed and housing used more intensively. Urban densities are linked to cultures of living, with regions like Latin America and East Asia noted for high density urban forms. Similar desakota patterns can be seen in Kolkata, Dhaka, Lahore and Beijing regions, and increasingly in several regions of Sub-Saharan Africa including Nigeria and surrounding Lake Victoria, though with much diversity in each case.

McGee first used the term desakota ('village-city') in relation to the incredible form of Java in Indonesia, with the densities of urban hinterlands greatly exceeding Western cities but with activity patterns remaining dispersed and linked to agriculture. China has many, the largest being the Pearl River Delta region, and the Yangtze River Delta megaregion, both with around 50m population and growing significantly.Īnother related form of megaregion comes from areas of dense agriculture that begin to urbanise with looser patterns of small scale industry. The GHSL data shows how widespread urban megaregions have become. A classic example is the northeastern seaboard of the USA (click on links to focus the map), a megalopolis as Gottman termed it, stretching hundreds of miles from Washington to Boston, with around 55m people. In the early 20th century, geographers like Patrick Geddes observed how rail and road networks were allowing rapidly growing cities to fuse together into vast sprawling conurbations.

Some introductory highlights are discussed here with links for further information. The GHSL dataset encourages understanding of the complex hierarchy of human settlement, rather than making simple rural-urban divisions. This interactive map has received 250,000 visitors since 2017, indicating the demand for high quality global population visualisations. Integrating huge volumes of satellite data with national census data, the GHSL has applications for a wide range of research and policy related to urban growth, development and sustainability, and is available as open data.

This interactive map shows data from the Global Human Settlement Layer (GHSL) produced by the European Commission JRC and the CIESIN Columbia University. Visualising Population Density Across the Globe

Population density definition