Thursday, October 1, 2009

The world as you've never imagined it before


I'm intrigued by a new map of the world, and of individual nations, drawn up in terms of population size and density rather than by land area. It shows countries and regions from an entirely new perspective.

Here, for example, are the lower 48 states of the USA, mapped by population size and density. Notice how just 12 cities skew population densities radically in their regions. (Seattle is the 12th, but it's so small in scale compared to the others that it's almost invisible on the map.)




The world, mapped according to population size and density, looks like this:




You'll find the maps above, and a host of others, at the Worldmapper Population Atlas. Very informative reading, and highly recommended.

Peter

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Cool maps but something is definitely wrong. Philadelphia (6), San Antonio (7) and San Diego (9)don't show up but are in the top 10 most populous cities in the US. I understand that density is playing a part in map construction but it still looks wrong.

MC

Old NFO said...

Interesting... Bet somebody got a LOT of $$ for developing that... :-)