1. Free condoms
2. Forced sterilizations
3. Wars
You choose!
If you ever wondered what the world would look like if it weren’t so sprawled out, here’s your chance.
The folks at Per Square Mile — yes, they blog about density — put together a handy infographic showing just how big a city the world would be if it lived in a single, massive metropolis.
To offer context, urbanization buff (and Ars Technica writer) Tim De Chant took the world’s 6.9 billion people — it will be an even 7 billion by October — and stuffed them into the continental United States, demonstrating the size of this literal “world city” if it were at the density of several of today’s most famous cities, from New York to Paris.
His findings:
- At Paris’ density, the world’s population could fit in Louisiana, Arkansas and Mississippi.
- At New York’s density, the world’s population could fit in Texas.
- At Singapore’s density, add Louisiana and Oklahoma to the above.
- At San Francisco’s density, add Arkansas to the above.
- At London’s density, add New Mexico to the above.
- At Houston’s density, well…just add most of the country.
You can see the entire infographic here.
It seems we at SmartPlanet missed this clever infographic when it first made waves on the Internet in January, but that’s OK — the global population is still growing. As far as we’re concerned, it remains valid, interesting and (above all) entertaining.
