The Most Populated Places in America

The most densely populated square kilometer in the USA is in Manhattan, New York. According to a new interactive map 42,673 people are tightly packed into one small area of New York. You can discover for yourself the 200 most densely populated square kilometers in 14 of America's largest cities on Garrett Dash Nelson's Square Density interactive map.

Select a city from the drop-down menu and you can sit back and watch as the map animates through the most densely populated places in your chosen city. A polygon overlaid on top of aerial imagery shows you the location of each of the most densely populated square kilometers. A smaller map shows you where that square is in the selected city. The text beneath the map shows you how many people live in each displayed square.

If you want to explore the map on your own then you can pause the animation and select any of the 200 most densely populated square kilometers by clicking on the chart, running along the bottom of the map.


This square kilometer in Barcelona is probably Europe's most populated location

According to Alistair Rae's examination of European population density, Think your country is crowded? These maps reveal the truth about population density across Europe the most densely populated square kilometer in Europe is in Barcelona. The Catalan city actually has one square kilometer housing 52,000 people. Of course there are locations outside of the USA & Europe where people live in far more densely populated locations.

If you want to explore population density elsewhere in the world then you should view the SEDAC Population Estimator (GPWv4). This interactive map uses NASA's Earth Observing System Data and Information System (EOSDIS) to show where the world's population lives. The map includes a tool to draw an area on the map to see an estimate of the population that is living there. You can therefore draw a square kilometer on the map to make your own comparisons with Europe's and America's most populated square kilometers. For example, I drew a square kilometer at random in Dhaka, Bangladesh and the map gave me a population estimate of 107,804. This is over twice as many people as the 52,000 people living in Europe's most densely populated 1km² in Barcelona.