This visualization may be slightly distorted by the projection for the map, but the point would still be valid. Canada has about the same area as the United States, but only 1/10 the population. And "Toronto is not a particularly dense city. A study released earlier this year ranked Toronto 19th out of 30 major cities in high-income countries in terms of density. It's not even the densest city in Canada, with Vancouver and Montreal both packing more people in per square mile."
Map via the dataisbeautiful subreddit.
The projection is some conic projection, I can't tell which, not Mercator. In a Mercator projection, lines of latitude and longitude are straight horizontal and vertical, respectively. Conic projections make a fan shape with curved lines of latitude and straight lines of longitude radiating out from the pole, like you can see here along the southern and western borders. That doesn't say all that much about distortion, though; some conic projections are equal area and some aren't (although almost everything is better than Mercator).
ReplyDeleteThank you, anon. I've slightly amended my text.
DeleteCanada is actually a smallish island in Lake Ontario.
DeleteAnd recall the stat that made the rounds a few years ago - 90% of Canadians live within 160 kilometers (100 miles) of a US border.
ReplyDeleteIt seems to me that I read a few years ago that each person on earth could live in a good-sized apartment (I cannot remember the dimensions) within...the Grand Canyon. Of course, plenty of the earth is not very fertile (which doesn't mean it couldn't be made to be fertile).
ReplyDeleteWhile population issues are very important, it seems to me that the issue is not how many people live on earth (for we could feed them all), but rather that political, economic, social, and religious issues keep us from living in a way where everyone could have plenty (or at least enough).