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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

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.

nl 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” Not true. Only is a quote (the Rwanda one) and two of the four quotes are not about countries (Raqqa - a city, and "densely-populated areas"). I partially deal with your quibbles on the definition of "place" here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27190788 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27190788 But I think it's fair to compare similarly geographically sized areas, preferably with somewhat similar political status (ie, there's a big difference between a very dense city surrounded by countryside to support it, vs a city state with no surrounding support area) It's hard to find many places as big as the Gaza Strip (365 sq km) that are as densely populated (5610 people per square km). Dhaka is the most closely comparable city: 306 sq km with a density of 29,069 ppl/sq km. But a city isn't comparable to a territory like the Gaza Strip. That is more similar to islands, enclave or isolated country. On Wikipedia's list[1] Singapore (722 sq km, 7,894 ppl/sq km), Hong Kong (1106 sq km, 6781 ppl/sq km), Bahrain (778 sq km, 1,982 ppl/sq km), and Malta (316 sq km, 1,633 ppl/sq km) seem the obvious comparisons. The Gaza strip obviously sits right up there amongst them. It is difficult to argue it isn't one of the most densely populated places in the world looking at comparable "places". [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_dependencies_by_population_density https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_dependen...

nl 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” Not true. Only is a quote (the Rwanda one) and two of the four quotes are not about countries (Raqqa - a city, and "densely-populated areas"). I partially deal with your quibbles on the definition of "place" here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27190788 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27190788 But I think it's fair to compare similarly geographically sized areas, preferably with somewhat similar political status (ie, there's a big difference between a very dense city surrounded by countryside to support it, vs a city state with no surrounding support area) It's hard to find many places as big as the Gaza Strip (365 sq km) that are as densely populated (5610 people per square km). Dhaka is the most closely comparable city: 306 sq km with a density of 29,069 ppl/sq km. But a city isn't comparable to a territory like the Gaza Strip. That is more similar to islands, enclave or isolated country. On Wikipedia's list[1] Singapore (722 sq km, 7,894 ppl/sq km), Hong Kong (1106 sq km, 6781 ppl/sq km), Bahrain (778 sq km, 1,982 ppl/sq km), and Malta (316 sq km, 1,633 ppl/sq km) seem the obvious comparisons. The Gaza strip obviously sits right up there amongst them. It is difficult to argue it isn't one of the most densely populated places in the world looking at comparable "places". [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_dependencies_by_population_density https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_dependen...