Somerville's population density is, from good old Wikipedia, 7,253.3/km2 It's no Paris or NYC, and doesn't make the list of most dense cities in the world by a

Somerville's population density is, from good old Wikipedia, 7,253.3/km2 It's no Paris or NYC, and doesn't make the list of most dense cities in the world by any mean, but it isn't a "sparse sprawl" either. A quick glance at population density statistics Eg: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_in_Germany_by_population https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_in_Germany_by_p... The main reason being that Somerville doesn't have that many large buildings (though there are some bigger ones. No real skyscrapper mind you), but there's nearly nothing else. Very few businesses and commerce. It's just people packed against each other.