4 ms·

You can look it up ... :] People / km^2 (all numbers obviously very approximate, so I've just rounded to thousands): Manhattan lower-east-side 35000 pp/km

You can look it up ... :] People / km^2 (all numbers obviously very approximate, so I've just rounded to thousands): Manhattan lower-east-side 35000 pp/km^2 Manhattan average 26000 pp/km^2 Hong Kong kowloon 44000 pp/km^2 Hong Kong island 16000 pp/km^2 Hong Kong new territories 4000 pp/km^2 Hong Kong average 6000 pp/km^2 Tokyo 23-ku average* 14000 pp/km^2 SF chinatown 29000 pp/km^2 SF nob-hill 20000 pp/km^2 SF mission-district 10000 pp/km^2 SF SOMA 5000 pp/km^2 SF potrero-hill 2000 pp/km^2 SF average 7000 pp/km^2 * Tokyo population is very consistent; it's not particularly dense in terms of peak density compared to other places, but it retains the same medium-high density across an enormous area...

tptacek 13y ago
That's misleading. Hong Kong isn't a city; it's an area composed of multiple cities. Kowloon metro has a density of 43,000 pp/km^2, six times San Francisco's average, over twenty times the average in Potrero Hill.
- snogglethorpe 13y ago
  That's why I gave figures for both overall average and focused central areas (not sure how you found that misleading)... :) Density figures can be tricky, no matter what the area used, because what's useful for one purpose isn't useful for another. While average density over a large area doesn't accurately reflect living condition in smaller sub-areas, it is useful for other purposes ("is the city full yet?" :). Generally it's useful to have both large-area averages and focused figures for popular subareas, maps to indicate density distribution, etc. [As I noted in my original comment, Tokyo is notable for the unusual consistency of its population distribution, at least within the central (but still large) 23-ku area.]
  - tptacek 13y ago
    You put the aggregate for Hong Kong, which is a region and not a city, alongside the numbers for San Francisco, Tokyo, and Manhattan. Was the point I was making.
    - snogglethorpe 13y ago
      Er, sure, whatever. I don't know much about HK in particular, but official designations of "city" boundaries are often pretty arbitrary, and can be downright misleading (e.g. don't reflect the distribution of population/commerce/transportation), so I dunno exactly where to draw the line... When in doubt it seems better to include more information. [Tokyo "the city" is much larger than HK "the region", but also includes enormous sparsely populated areas... and on a practical level, the entire Tokyo-Kawasaki-Yokohama area is really just one humungous city, with a completely different shape than anything official... deciding where to draw the line is difficult, and depends a lot on what your end goal is.]
      - tptacek 13y ago
        It wasn't a big deal either way, I'm just nerding out.

tptacek 13y ago

That's misleading. Hong Kong isn't a city; it's an area composed of multiple cities. Kowloon metro has a density of 43,000 pp/km^2, six times San Francisco's average, over twenty times the average in Potrero Hill.

snogglethorpe 13y ago
That's why I gave figures for both overall average and focused central areas (not sure how you found that misleading)... :) Density figures can be tricky, no matter what the area used, because what's useful for one purpose isn't useful for another. While average density over a large area doesn't accurately reflect living condition in smaller sub-areas, it is useful for other purposes ("is the city full yet?" :). Generally it's useful to have both large-area averages and focused figures for popular subareas, maps to indicate density distribution, etc. [As I noted in my original comment, Tokyo is notable for the unusual consistency of its population distribution, at least within the central (but still large) 23-ku area.]
- tptacek 13y ago
  You put the aggregate for Hong Kong, which is a region and not a city, alongside the numbers for San Francisco, Tokyo, and Manhattan. Was the point I was making.
  - snogglethorpe 13y ago
    Er, sure, whatever. I don't know much about HK in particular, but official designations of "city" boundaries are often pretty arbitrary, and can be downright misleading (e.g. don't reflect the distribution of population/commerce/transportation), so I dunno exactly where to draw the line... When in doubt it seems better to include more information. [Tokyo "the city" is much larger than HK "the region", but also includes enormous sparsely populated areas... and on a practical level, the entire Tokyo-Kawasaki-Yokohama area is really just one humungous city, with a completely different shape than anything official... deciding where to draw the line is difficult, and depends a lot on what your end goal is.]
    - tptacek 13y ago
      It wasn't a big deal either way, I'm just nerding out.