The top twenty city-regions in the world are shown below. This is the largest city-region in the world by this measure, with a population of 43.8m in 2020 (rapidly developing from a base of 5.8m in 1980). The GHSL method generally emphasises large continuous urban regions, such as the megacity region of the ‘Greater Bay Area’ in China shown above, which has formed from the fusion of Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Dongguan and Jiangmen. This land use based method of defining city-regions produces different estimates of city populations to analyses based on administrative boundaries. When you hover over cities on the World Population Density website, these city boundaries are highlighted. This has been done using continuous areas of the highest urban category (urban centres) for the 2020 data. We can use this layer to define the boundaries of city-regions across the globe. The Built-Up Area and Population layers in the GHSL are used to define a settlement model (GHSL-SMOD) layer, which classifies land into urban and rural typologies. Smaller developed countries have similar figures to the USA, including New Zealand, Norway and the Republic of Ireland.Īnalysing the World’s Largest City-Regions Using the GHSL This is the lowest figure for any large developed country in the world. The USA is renowned for its low density living and suburban sprawl, and the Population Weighted Density measure for 2020 is 2.2k. Population Weighted Density 2020 (pp/km 2)įor comparison, the equivalent Population Weighted Density figure for the UK is 4.1k, France is 3.7k and Germany is considerably lower at 2.7k. The table below shows the top 20 countries by Population Weighted Density using the 2020 data- Rank (by PWD 2020) India is 9.9k pp/km 2 and China is 8.9k pp/km 2. This is a more representative measure than standard population density, which is affected by low density suburban/peri-urban and rural land, even where the population in these areas is relatively low.Ĭhina and India have very high density cities, but their large rural populations translate into moderate Population Weighted Density statistics overall. The PWD is calculated by weighting each 1km 2 cell according to the population, summing all the cells for the city/region, and then dividing the sum by the total population of the country/city (i.e. Population Weighted Density is a measure of the typical density experienced by residents in the country/city, in this case using the 1km 2 scale GHSL data. To complement the graph of the population in each density category, this updated version of the World Population Density Map includes Population Weighted Density statistics for each country and city. The statistical analysis on the World Population Density Map website has also been updated using the 2023 GHSL data, so you can view the density profiles for all countries around the globe. Example images for Shanghai and New York City are shown below.Ĭountry Density Profiles – the Diversity of Human Settlement The dataset can now be used for more accurate comparisons of population and density for cities across the globe. Previous releases of the GHSL were underestimating urban densities for cities where census data was weaker, but this appears to no longer be the case. The added level of detail also improves the representation of cities, with more accurate density analysis, and improved techniques to differentiate residential from industrial and commercial urban land uses. This is also the case for other key regions such as Sub-Saharan Africa, and China. The tens of thousands of small villages are identified and used to more accurately distribute India’s huge population. The results are much improved, particularly for complex rural and peri-urban landscapes in the Global South, such as for India shown below. The new GHSL 2023 data has produced a much more detailed 10 metre dataset of built-up area (using recent European Space Agency Sentinel data), and this is the basis for creating the updated population layer. Improved Level of Detail for Cities and Rural Landscapes I have updated the World Population Density Map website to include this new 2023 data, with both the cartography and statistical analysis now based on the new data. The level of detail for cities and rural areas is impressive, and it overcomes the limitations of previous releases of the GHSL. This update has greatly improved the GHSL data, with a 10 metre scale built-up area dataset of the entire globe which has been used to create a 100 metre scale global population density layer. The European Commission JRC recently released a new 2023 update of the Global Human Settlement Layer (GHSL) data.
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