4 ms·

Here is a single reference: https://www.middleeastobserver.org/2016/07/12/pcbs-reports-gaza-strip-is-the-most-densely-populated-place-on-earth https://www.middl

Here is a single reference: https://www.middleeastobserver.org/2016/07/12/pcbs-reports-gaza-strip-is-the-most-densely-populated-place-on-earth https://www.middleeastobserver.org/2016/07/12/pcbs-reports-g... "Do you generally call things out as being untrustworthy for claiming that the top 5% is among the highest in a rank?" The reason I consider this claim "misleading" is that I never see the "one of the most densely populated..." phrase on stories about Paris, Kathmandu, Seoul or any of the hundreds of more densely populated areas, yet I constantly see it in reference relatively much-less-densely-populated Gaza. When I start seeing news stories that read "The mayor of Hoboken NJ, one of the most densely populated areas of the world, opposes a measure that would increase affordable housing..." then the phrase won't make me scratch my head anymore. Why does this phrase always come up in relation to Gaza and not the hundreds of other cities/regions that are more densely populated? If we're trading references, can you show me some where the BBC refers to Paris as "one of the most densely populated places in the world?"

stormbrew 5y ago
Are Paris, Kathmandu, Seol, or Hoboken under blockade by a government that claims their land but makes the people on that land stateless, and also periodically bombs their urban infrastructure? It's possible that the density of gaza is in some way relevant to the current events taking place there in a way that it might not be for the other places you've listed.
- sequoia 5y ago
  There are plenty of stories where this would be relevant. "Many refugees are landing in suburbs of Paris, one of the most densely populated..." "...rural Korean population is flocking to Seoul, one of the most..." Anyway it's clear that Gaza is a densely populated area. I still consider the highly selective use of the "one of the most" phrasing curious. For the record I think it's bad to drop bombs onto (or fire rockets into) civilian areas even if they are only sparsely populated, for what it's worth.
  - stormbrew 5y ago
    > There are plenty of stories where this would be relevant. "Many refugees are landing in suburbs of Paris, one of the most densely populated..." "...rural Korean population is flocking to Seoul, one of the most..." I mean, is it? The suburbs of Paris and Seoul are relatively unbounded in size, if nothing else. Gaza has a hard line on how many sqmi it is in a way very few other jurisdictions do. The density of Gaza is particularly relevant because the situation makes that density a problem in ways it isn't really for Paris or Seoul, as they are not being bombed, blockaded, or subject to limitations on when they even have power or water.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- flyinglizard 5y ago
  That’s very disingenuous - there are zero territorial claims against Israel in Gaza Strip. Israel unilaterally withdrew from Gaza, dissolving all settlements in the area, back in 2005. The blockade is simply an ongoing state of war between Gaza and Israel. Gaza also borders with Egypt.
  - stormbrew 5y ago
    Israel recognizes no government in Gaza (neither the Palestinian Authority, which has no power there, nor Hamas, which they recognize as terrorists not a government), claims control over entry and exit to the territory of goods and people, including by sea, and claims the right to enter the territory at any time to carry out military activity. Israel also does not recognize a Palestinian state in general to be at war with to begin with. There is some lip service to an eventual two state solution that gets less and less paid to every year, but as it stands there's no one to be at war with, as far as Israel is concerned. There's just a bunch of stateless people stuck in a postage-stamp-sized jurisdiction that they've left in a lawless state. "Disengagement" is not devolution is not autonomy. The idea that this is a war is a convenient PR fiction.
    - avip 5y ago
      Were you using the term "claims control over entry of goods into the territory" instead of "claims their land", there would be much less to argue about. "claims their land" sounds like Israel would like to annex Gaza and make it part of Israel - which is ridiculous and patently false.
      - stormbrew 5y ago
        Is it? Certainly, there are political factions within Israel that claim it should be part of Israel -- that's why there were settlements to remove in the first place. It would be ridiculous to deny that, honestly. Those factions seem to continue to grow in influence every year as well. The idea that Israel should be one state that covers the entirety of the former mandate of Palestine seems to actually be pretty popular in Israel right now. It may not be the official policy, but it is a very real possibility. Regardless, if a country exerts every measure of control over a territory it can including entry and exit from it along international borders, it's really hard imo to argue that it sees it as sovereign in any way. Israel clearly does not see Gaza as an independent state. So if it's not an independent state what exactly is it a part of if not Israel. Or, to put it a little bit more snarky: you can't neglect your way out of an occupation. Neglect is, in fact, a weapon in cases like this.
trainsplanes 5y ago
They’re referring to the fact Gaza/Palestine is one of the densest countries in the world. Gaza is also completely surrounded by sea and another country, so it’s an incredibly dense place with no room to grow. Seoul and Paris are also dense places, but you can keep walking and eventually you see it thin out without a clear border on city limits. Put a fence around Paris city core and fire a missile on the city center—news will talk about one of the densest places on earth being blown up.
- ifdefdebug 5y ago
  Gaza actually has borders with two countries.
nl 5y ago
> If we're trading references, can you show me some where the BBC refers to Paris as "one of the most densely populated places in the world?" "Tricks from the most densely populated city... Paris is one of the most densely populated city in the EU with relatively few green spaces." https://www.bbc.com/reel/video/p06sbtzz/tricks-from-the-most-densely-populated-city https://www.bbc.com/reel/video/p06sbtzz/tricks-from-the-most... > The reason I consider this claim "misleading" is that I never see the "one of the most densely populated..." phrase on stories about Paris, Kathmandu, Seoul or any of the hundreds of more densely populated areas, yet I constantly see it in reference relatively much-less-densely-populated Gaza. War in dense urban areas is a special kind of hell. And it's not particularly rare to note dense population when it is especially relevant. > Officials in Bangladesh, one of the most densely populated countries in the world, have said the country is overwhelmed with the Rohingya population that has emerged in the Cox’s Bazar area. https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/stateless-persecuted-rohingya https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/stateless-persecuted... > At first, Rwanda’s president, Juvénal Habyarimana, refused, protesting that Rwanda was among the most densely populated countries in the world https://www.theguardian.com/news/2017/sep/12/americas-secret-role-in-the-rwandan-genocide https://www.theguardian.com/news/2017/sep/12/americas-secret... > For four months in 2017, an American-led coalition in Syria dropped some ten thousand bombs on Raqqa, the densely populated capital of the Islamic State. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/12/21/americas-war-on-syrian-civilians https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/12/21/americas-war-o... > Withholding of more precise data raises eyebrows as rights groups remain sceptical of geographic coordinates in densely-populated areas. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/11/27/us-led-coalition-against-isil-resulted-in-civilian-harm https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/11/27/us-led-coalition-a...
- sequoia 5y ago
  From your examples only Bangladesh is referred to by reporters (not as a quotation) as one of the most densely populated in this case “countries” (which is much easier to count than “places”) in the world. (“Most densely populated places” means something different as of course cities are “places” and the definition of place is highly debatable as this thread shows.) Kudos & good examples. I still think this meme is attached particularly to Gaza but clearly it’s not exclusive.
runarberg 5y ago
Since the original post is about Google maps, lets use that as a tool for a moment: Gaza city and Tel Aviv have about the same population size according to Wikipedia (about 590,000 and 460,000 respectively). The Tel Aviv metro area is about 1,500 km² which is almost 3 times larger then the entire Gaza strip (365 km²). The Tel Aviv urban area has about half the population size of the entire Gaza Strip while the Tel Aviv Metro area has almost double the population size as the entire Gaza strip. Both Tel Aviv and Gaza city border the coast, both are somewhat bounded by borders to the East. So Gaza and Tel Aviv should be somewhat comparable when we look them on a map. However if you take a look at this: First Tel Aviv: https://www.google.com/maps/@32.0703502,34.8333795,11.38z https://www.google.com/maps/@32.0703502,34.8333795,11.38z It looks pretty normal, a dense urban core with some sprawl around it. Now lets look at Gaza City with the same zoom level: https://www.google.com/maps/@31.5083142,34.4330704,11z https://www.google.com/maps/@31.5083142,34.4330704,11z Now this looks odd. There is only the dense urban core and then some nothing and then some borders. This is not how cities grow naturally. Look at a zoomed in level of Gaza City: https://www.google.com/maps/@31.517549,34.4848539,13.55z https://www.google.com/maps/@31.517549,34.4848539,13.55z And the same zoom level of Tel Aviv: https://www.google.com/maps/@32.0641297,34.8076298,13.55z https://www.google.com/maps/@32.0641297,34.8076298,13.55z Notice how abruptly the Gaza City ends, while Tel Aviv looks like a city. Clearly there is something going on there. Looking at the map alone I would not guess that Gaza City was a city the same size as Tel Aviv. I think it is worth reporting this fact given the anomalous nature of Gaza. Another—and a more important—reason this is worth reporting is precisely the fact that Gaza is a densely populated area that is abnormally bounded in growth. This makes Gaza unique (except maybe Singapore and Hong Kong; but I do recall news media like mentioning those as being densely populated as well).
astura 5y ago
If Hoboken NJ was blurry on Google Maps they would also describe it as "one of the most densely populated areas of the world" because it's fucking weird that a place with such a population density would be blurry on Google Maps.

stormbrew 5y ago

Are Paris, Kathmandu, Seol, or Hoboken under blockade by a government that claims their land but makes the people on that land stateless, and also periodically bombs their urban infrastructure? It's possible that the density of gaza is in some way relevant to the current events taking place there in a way that it might not be for the other places you've listed.

sequoia 5y ago
There are plenty of stories where this would be relevant. "Many refugees are landing in suburbs of Paris, one of the most densely populated..." "...rural Korean population is flocking to Seoul, one of the most..." Anyway it's clear that Gaza is a densely populated area. I still consider the highly selective use of the "one of the most" phrasing curious. For the record I think it's bad to drop bombs onto (or fire rockets into) civilian areas even if they are only sparsely populated, for what it's worth.
- stormbrew 5y ago
  > There are plenty of stories where this would be relevant. "Many refugees are landing in suburbs of Paris, one of the most densely populated..." "...rural Korean population is flocking to Seoul, one of the most..." I mean, is it? The suburbs of Paris and Seoul are relatively unbounded in size, if nothing else. Gaza has a hard line on how many sqmi it is in a way very few other jurisdictions do. The density of Gaza is particularly relevant because the situation makes that density a problem in ways it isn't really for Paris or Seoul, as they are not being bombed, blockaded, or subject to limitations on when they even have power or water.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
flyinglizard 5y ago
That’s very disingenuous - there are zero territorial claims against Israel in Gaza Strip. Israel unilaterally withdrew from Gaza, dissolving all settlements in the area, back in 2005. The blockade is simply an ongoing state of war between Gaza and Israel. Gaza also borders with Egypt.
- stormbrew 5y ago
  Israel recognizes no government in Gaza (neither the Palestinian Authority, which has no power there, nor Hamas, which they recognize as terrorists not a government), claims control over entry and exit to the territory of goods and people, including by sea, and claims the right to enter the territory at any time to carry out military activity. Israel also does not recognize a Palestinian state in general to be at war with to begin with. There is some lip service to an eventual two state solution that gets less and less paid to every year, but as it stands there's no one to be at war with, as far as Israel is concerned. There's just a bunch of stateless people stuck in a postage-stamp-sized jurisdiction that they've left in a lawless state. "Disengagement" is not devolution is not autonomy. The idea that this is a war is a convenient PR fiction.
  - avip 5y ago
    Were you using the term "claims control over entry of goods into the territory" instead of "claims their land", there would be much less to argue about. "claims their land" sounds like Israel would like to annex Gaza and make it part of Israel - which is ridiculous and patently false.
    - stormbrew 5y ago
      Is it? Certainly, there are political factions within Israel that claim it should be part of Israel -- that's why there were settlements to remove in the first place. It would be ridiculous to deny that, honestly. Those factions seem to continue to grow in influence every year as well. The idea that Israel should be one state that covers the entirety of the former mandate of Palestine seems to actually be pretty popular in Israel right now. It may not be the official policy, but it is a very real possibility. Regardless, if a country exerts every measure of control over a territory it can including entry and exit from it along international borders, it's really hard imo to argue that it sees it as sovereign in any way. Israel clearly does not see Gaza as an independent state. So if it's not an independent state what exactly is it a part of if not Israel. Or, to put it a little bit more snarky: you can't neglect your way out of an occupation. Neglect is, in fact, a weapon in cases like this.

trainsplanes 5y ago

They’re referring to the fact Gaza/Palestine is one of the densest countries in the world. Gaza is also completely surrounded by sea and another country, so it’s an incredibly dense place with no room to grow. Seoul and Paris are also dense places, but you can keep walking and eventually you see it thin out without a clear border on city limits. Put a fence around Paris city core and fire a missile on the city center—news will talk about one of the densest places on earth being blown up.

ifdefdebug 5y ago
Gaza actually has borders with two countries.

nl 5y ago

> If we're trading references, can you show me some where the BBC refers to Paris as "one of the most densely populated places in the world?" "Tricks from the most densely populated city... Paris is one of the most densely populated city in the EU with relatively few green spaces." https://www.bbc.com/reel/video/p06sbtzz/tricks-from-the-most-densely-populated-city https://www.bbc.com/reel/video/p06sbtzz/tricks-from-the-most... > The reason I consider this claim "misleading" is that I never see the "one of the most densely populated..." phrase on stories about Paris, Kathmandu, Seoul or any of the hundreds of more densely populated areas, yet I constantly see it in reference relatively much-less-densely-populated Gaza. War in dense urban areas is a special kind of hell. And it's not particularly rare to note dense population when it is especially relevant. > Officials in Bangladesh, one of the most densely populated countries in the world, have said the country is overwhelmed with the Rohingya population that has emerged in the Cox’s Bazar area. https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/stateless-persecuted-rohingya https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/stateless-persecuted... > At first, Rwanda’s president, Juvénal Habyarimana, refused, protesting that Rwanda was among the most densely populated countries in the world https://www.theguardian.com/news/2017/sep/12/americas-secret-role-in-the-rwandan-genocide https://www.theguardian.com/news/2017/sep/12/americas-secret... > For four months in 2017, an American-led coalition in Syria dropped some ten thousand bombs on Raqqa, the densely populated capital of the Islamic State. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/12/21/americas-war-on-syrian-civilians https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/12/21/americas-war-o... > Withholding of more precise data raises eyebrows as rights groups remain sceptical of geographic coordinates in densely-populated areas. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/11/27/us-led-coalition-against-isil-resulted-in-civilian-harm https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/11/27/us-led-coalition-a...

sequoia 5y ago
From your examples only Bangladesh is referred to by reporters (not as a quotation) as one of the most densely populated in this case “countries” (which is much easier to count than “places”) in the world. (“Most densely populated places” means something different as of course cities are “places” and the definition of place is highly debatable as this thread shows.) Kudos & good examples. I still think this meme is attached particularly to Gaza but clearly it’s not exclusive.

runarberg 5y ago

Since the original post is about Google maps, lets use that as a tool for a moment: Gaza city and Tel Aviv have about the same population size according to Wikipedia (about 590,000 and 460,000 respectively). The Tel Aviv metro area is about 1,500 km² which is almost 3 times larger then the entire Gaza strip (365 km²). The Tel Aviv urban area has about half the population size of the entire Gaza Strip while the Tel Aviv Metro area has almost double the population size as the entire Gaza strip. Both Tel Aviv and Gaza city border the coast, both are somewhat bounded by borders to the East. So Gaza and Tel Aviv should be somewhat comparable when we look them on a map. However if you take a look at this: First Tel Aviv: https://www.google.com/maps/@32.0703502,34.8333795,11.38z https://www.google.com/maps/@32.0703502,34.8333795,11.38z It looks pretty normal, a dense urban core with some sprawl around it. Now lets look at Gaza City with the same zoom level: https://www.google.com/maps/@31.5083142,34.4330704,11z https://www.google.com/maps/@31.5083142,34.4330704,11z Now this looks odd. There is only the dense urban core and then some nothing and then some borders. This is not how cities grow naturally. Look at a zoomed in level of Gaza City: https://www.google.com/maps/@31.517549,34.4848539,13.55z https://www.google.com/maps/@31.517549,34.4848539,13.55z And the same zoom level of Tel Aviv: https://www.google.com/maps/@32.0641297,34.8076298,13.55z https://www.google.com/maps/@32.0641297,34.8076298,13.55z Notice how abruptly the Gaza City ends, while Tel Aviv looks like a city. Clearly there is something going on there. Looking at the map alone I would not guess that Gaza City was a city the same size as Tel Aviv. I think it is worth reporting this fact given the anomalous nature of Gaza. Another—and a more important—reason this is worth reporting is precisely the fact that Gaza is a densely populated area that is abnormally bounded in growth. This makes Gaza unique (except maybe Singapore and Hong Kong; but I do recall news media like mentioning those as being densely populated as well).

astura 5y ago

If Hoboken NJ was blurry on Google Maps they would also describe it as "one of the most densely populated areas of the world" because it's fucking weird that a place with such a population density would be blurry on Google Maps.