A never-before-seen world map exposes this puzzling phenomenon while completely ignoring state borders. Unsurprisingly, the highest population concentration is found in Asia.
This famous map visible on the Metrocosm site was developed using statistical data belonging to the Socioeconomic Data and Applications Center (SEDAC) affiliated with NASA. While on this type of demographic maps, the data generally takes into account the different states, this is not the case here.
Each yellow dot corresponds to a number of 8000 or more people and represents an area of 9 square miles, or approximately 23.5 km² (1 square mile = 2.59 km²). The population density is therefore at least 350 inhabitants per square kilometre. On the contrary, the areas in black have fewer inhabitants than the threshold of the areas in yellow.
This therefore makes it possible to understand that half of the population lives in the areas in yellow on the map, while the other half is in the areas in black. This also makes it possible to note that the vast majority of emerged lands ultimately remain sparsely populated, while 1% of these same lands are home to half the world’s population.
The lands in yellow on the map include areas in which it is possible to speak clearly of overpopulation such as in India, Bangladesh and a good part of China, which together concentrate 46% of the world’s population. It is even possible to identify certain cities such as Chengdu and Chongqing (central China), whose region alone concentrates more than 100 million people! (see below)
To a lesser degree, it is possible to distinguish the island of Java in Indonesia and its 140 million inhabitants, as well as the Japanese capital Tokyo and its 37 million souls (see below).
In Europe, a compromise between population centers and space seems to have been found even if it is still possible to identify a few large urban centers such as Paris, London, Dortmund-Cologne-Essen, Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Milan or even Rome and Istanbul.
In North Africa, our eyes are automatically riveted on the Nile Valley and its delta (Egypt) where the megalopolis and capital Cairo is located.
Sources: Metrocosm – SEDAC