Population Density And Public Transportation In Large World Cities, Visualized

Some of the world's densest cities in terms of population have world class public transportation systems — megalopolises in Asia especially have invested heavily in transit. On the other hand, large cities in the United States like Los Angeles lag behind in their transit infrastructure.

Matthew Hartzell AKA NewChinaHand on Reddit, produced a thought-provoking infographic showing 12 different cities, including both their transit grid and their density level. He created this data visualization by scouring through publicly available data from each country's census and Wikipedia.

"As an urban planner I've always been fascinated by the concept of density," Hartzell said in his post. "Density is not the only facet of cities that matter, but it is a hugely influential measure that is connected to everything from urban design to greenhouse gasses to transportation to livability, to economic development." See the full-sized map here.

​"How do all these cities' density patterns relate to their respective
transportation systems?" he asked. "In some cities we can see an almost perfect
overlapping of subway networks with high density districts (light red
and above)."

Hartzell noted that when you viewed these individual cities right next to each other at the same scale, "they illuminate similarities and differences in
both density patterns, and the relationship between density and
transportation, across this disparate sample of cities around the world."

[Via r/DataIsBeautiful]