If the worlds population lived in one city January 18, 2011 by Tim De Chant http://persquaremile.

com/2011/01/18/if -the-worlds-population-lived-in-one-city/

1. on February 21, 2011 at 11:01 am | Reply Saskia Sassen Dear Tim de Chant: this is great very telling. and the comments you got are fantastic, many other good projects in there.

We at http://www.UrbanAge.net have also constructed diverse visualizations of density taking some ten major cities around the world. Aim different from yours, but connected: what are the different pop to surface density profiles. saskia sassen http://www.saskiasassen.com

2. on June 13, 2011 at 12:02 pm | Reply Sean I would be interested to know (and see corresponding maps of) how much agricultural land is required to feed 6.9 billion people at the densities listed above? 3. on June 14, 2011 at 8:56 pm | Reply Cmo sera una ciudad que albergase a toda la poblacion mundial? [Veredicto: grande] | [...] Sera esencial disponer de edificios de gran altura para albergar a toda la poblacin mundial en vertical pues en Texas tocaramos a menos de 10 centmetros cuadrados de suelo por cabeza. [Per Square Mile] [...] 4. on June 15, 2011 at 3:19 am | Reply quikboy Hey, its nice to see Houston get a mention. You even used Texas in most of the maps :^) Yes, its true, Houston is by far not the densest city in the USA (even if we are the 4th largest in America), but there are other things to consider t hat might make more Houston denser than you think. Living here, Ive noticed that: a) Bayous and parks Houston is known as the Bayou City because weve got lots of bayous and resoviors. W e also pride ourselves on our many city and county parks, as well as parks from local subdivisions. Those take up a heavy chunk of land I think, and its not viable to count that in the calculations since people dont normally live on those. b) Population count Compared to the other cities on the list, Houston has a large influx of illegal immigrants. I dont want to draw up a debate, but thats the reality.You can probably figure out from where. Due to fears that they might get deported (even if US Census doesnt report them to ICE), many choose not to participate in the census. As a result, you see less people living in a large city. c) Cities with land constraints New York City and San Francisco are mostly island based, while Singapore itself is an island. They couldnt spread out if they wanted to. Houston can expand as far north, west, and south as much as itd like. W hich comes to another issue. d) Age of the cities Houston is practically the youngest on the list. Before cars, it was very convenient and practical to build dense (See London and Paris). W ith the coming of the stagecoach and car however,buildings could afford to be less dense. The outlying suburbs of Houston became an actual part of the city given the citys boom period. They werent developed as part of the city in advance. If you check out Houstons history, there has been many times the city has incorporated different communites and towns into the Houston ETJ (extraterritorial jurisdiction). Another reason why we seem so spread out. e) Real estate boom As we all known, Houston is very subu rby. Its not crazy to notice that every house does take up quite a chunk of land, and if you took into account that not every house was occupied, thatd show further concentration.

I can keep going on and on, but the point being is that we can compare bits of info based on data we have, but to truly know how dense a city is, I think we should have better iinformation on true population counts, and then base it on land thats actually developed and inhabited. 5. on June 29, 2011 at 11:20 am | Reply Cee Farris How about ten supercities per continent? For the US that would be ten cities of 30 million a piece. You would stick them near sources of abundant water (the coasts) and away from farmland. Those on the southern coastlines could get electricity from solar power, while those in the Northeast and Pacific Northwest could use wind and tidal. Rail systems would link the pop c enters and new neighborhoods would be built around light rail stations. I would build the super cities on the structure of existing cities and dismantle what cities you didnt need, especially those in hurricane, drought and earthquake zones. Places like Seattle, Houston, Mobile,Tampa Bay, Savanna, Baltimore, Detroit, Chicago, New York and Boston make sense. All others would not. Cities that large would be run more like states and the mayors resembling governors. One problem is that food production in keep ing with the low impact philosophy would need to be lots of small organic farms, maximizing their local crops. You couldnt grow lettuce in the desert anymore. How much land would you need to feed ten supercities of 30 million each if you only used small o rganic farms? Im guessing a 5 acre farm could feed 1000 people. So at just under 2400 miles Delaware would do nicely. Of course you couldnt put this all in the same place as crop requirements differ and you want to minimize food transport costs so I would have a ring of 2400 sq miles around each city to provide food. Alternatively, you could have farming/open space areas within each city. New Jersey could be the garden State again! Each supercity would be the size of Connecticut (5,500 square miles) I used NYCs density, but without any suburbs. 6. on July 10, 2011 at 9:24 pm | Reply Mauricio Huaco Dear Tim, Thanks for such an inspiring contribution! I have done something similiar by calculating how much space would it be requiered in four different scenarios; from 1, 10, 1 00 and 1,000 sq mt (square meters, not miles) per person. As it will be understood, alloting the minimun space is quite absurd, but it make some sense when comparing it with other spatial units. The first one is a 1 sq mt/per, just enough to stand alon e, while 10 sq mt is just enough as a vital space for basic living. (sleep, cook and shower). A 100 sq mt spatial-unit might be more representative while including enough space for a vegetable garden and minimun public space (United States and Curitibas u rban green space is about 50 sq mt/per) The last one includes industrial, natural and infrastructural land requiered to produce large scale goods. Based on my own region and country geographic size just for comparison resons, some of my students end very surprised. Anyhow, I would like to keep looking on this figures. Regarding footprint estimations, I have found it very difficult to calculate in urban scale, while it is more easy in regional / national scales. Still, a nice research challenge for us. Nice to hear comments from Saskia Sassen.

7. on July 24, 2011 at 8:50 pm | Reply Cameron Murray Interesting. But doesnt really say a lot about how much land is required with existing technology to feed clothe and shelter these people . Its just like saying If all the residents of a city stood really close together they could all fit in one football stadium. Thats true. But if they all were crammed into the stadium and you took away the rest of the city, they wouldnt last long. The most interesting thing for me is that Paris is the most dense city used for the comparison.