Europe's Population Mountains

Topi Tjukanov has discovered how to give the Netherlands mountains. The answer is to turn population data into elevation. If you do that then the densely populated Netherlands becomes a mountaineer's dream of climbing heaven.

Topi Tjukanov's 3D Global Human Settlement is a threejs powered mapped visualization of European population data, in which population is expressed as elevation. The higher the population the higher the elevation on the map.

While the Netherlands is one of the most densely populated countries in Europe its cities aren't among Europe's most populated urban centers. Istanbul is the city that towers over this map. With a population of around 14.7 million residents Istanbul is Europe's most populous city. Moscow is the next most populated city in Europe with around 13 million residents.


You can explore a 3D map of America on Mapbox's Population Density Inspector. This interactive map visualizes the population density of each census block as a 3D tower.

The Population Density Inspector allows you to explore the number of people living in each census block in America. The height of each census block on the map represents the population density (based on census block population counts). You can read about how Mapbox created the map (with a little help from Turf.js and Tippecanoe) on the Mapbox blog.