# Cities that look larger or smaller on Google Earth than you'd expect?



## tablemtn (May 2, 2006)

I'll try to post some screenshots later on, but some cities do seem either quite a bit larger or smaller in satellite imagery than you'd expect from published population statistics.

Larger:

Rangoon, Burma. The urban area sprawls quite a long ways north up the river, and quite a ways east from downtown.

Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. The official statistics say that only 2.4 million or so people live in the urban area, but the city sprawls quite a bit into the west.

Luanda, Angola. This looks like a very large city, with informal settlements stretching well into the east, and up and down the coast.

Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Considering how crowded the slums are, I think it's VERY unlikely that only 2 million people live in the Port-au-Prince area. I'm betting the real figure is around 3.5 - 4 million, depending on where you draw the boundaries.

Cotonou, Benin. The urban area sprawls a long ways both east and west of downtown. I'm betting quite a few more than "1.2 million" people live in the area, and the "official" figure of 760,000 clearly has no basis in reality.

Many other African cities look bigger than their published population. Bamako, Nouakchott, Lusaka, and Kano, Nigeria are some others in this category.

Smaller: 

Frankfurt, Germany. The main city looks like a thin little wedge surrounded by farmland. After looking at Paris or London from the air, it looks absolutely tiny.

Hong Kong. Looks extremely small for its population. And actually, it feels quite small when you visit, since you can walk from the inner harbour to the slopes of the hills after only a few blocks in the financial district.

Mumbai, India. For a gigantic megacity, its physical footprint seems rather small. 

Damascus, Syria. I've seen estimates that up to 6.5 million people live in the Damascus area. If so, they live in very cramped quarters.


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## -Corey- (Jul 8, 2005)

Interesting, I expected Mexico city to be larger than most major cities, but in fact cities like Atlanta or even Houston are even larger than Mexico City. Even San Diego is larger than Sao Paolo.


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## Thorin (May 8, 2006)

tablemtn said:


> Frankfurt, Germany. The main city looks like a thin little wedge surrounded by farmland. After looking at Paris or London from the air, it looks absolutely tiny.


Frankfurt IS small. Absolutely no comparizon with Paris or London. It has 600k inhabitants, while Paris and London are aorund 10 milions in the metropolitan area.


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## Captain Obvious (Sep 13, 2002)

Santiago Chile has a surprisingly small footprint for a city of over 5 million people. 

It takes up the equivalent land area of an American metro of 1 million.


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## JPBrazil (Mar 12, 2007)

Vrysxy said:


> Interesting, I expected Mexico city to be larger than most major cities, but in fact cities like Atlanta or even Houston are even larger than Mexico City. Even San Diego is larger than Sao Paolo.


The diference is that most american cities are far less dense than other cities around the world.


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## Moolio (Oct 3, 2004)

By far the biggest-looking I've seen has to be Vienna, Austria. The city's area of dense build-up is downright huge compared to the relatively modest population.


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## Xusein (Sep 27, 2005)

Most US cities do actually look bigger than they are, when looking at population stats, mostly because of sprawl.


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## karim aboussir (Dec 4, 2006)

rabat region is bigger in size than casablanca morocco but casablanca has a population of 4 million in greater casablanca area compared to rabat morocco with only 2 million in the greater rabat region


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## goschio (Dec 2, 2002)

Thorin said:


> Frankfurt IS small. Absolutely no comparizon with Paris or London. It has 600k inhabitants, while Paris and London are aorund 10 milions in the metropolitan area.


So you compare the city limits with the metropolitan area. Frankfurt has a metro of 4 million. Of course its still much smaller than Paris and London.


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## Kiss the Rain (Apr 2, 2006)

I'd say most most american citiess urban area looks tiiiiiiiiiiny compared to their population, and yes, i understand why that's so.


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## LMCA1990 (Jun 18, 2005)

the Miami metropolitan area looks huge :uh:


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## karim aboussir (Dec 4, 2006)

los angeles looks bigger than miami very very very large region for a population of 20 million people as well


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## binhai (Dec 22, 2006)

Rio looks tiny compared to its population on Google Earth, but of course that's due to the mountains hemming in the city.


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## gjergjkastrioti (Oct 10, 2007)

Madrid looks very small even confront Rome


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## karim aboussir (Dec 4, 2006)

cairo looks tiny for a region of 25 million people tunis and casablanca are the same size of cairo . tunis is 3 million casablanca is 4 million 
imagine how compacted it is in cairo


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## brisavoine (Mar 19, 2006)

Thorin said:


> Frankfurt IS small. Absolutely no comparizon with Paris or London. It has 600k inhabitants, while Paris and London are aorund 10 milions in the metropolitan area.





goschio said:


> So you compare the city limits with the metropolitan area. Frankfurt has a metro of 4 million. Of course its still much smaller than Paris and London.


I once made the calculation for another thread. If you take 1,600 km² (615 sq. miles) of land around the center of Paris, you find 8.6 million people living within that area. If you take 1,600 km² around the center of London you find 7.6 million people. If you take 1,600 km² around the center of Frankfurt you find 2.3 million people. That gives an idea of each city's relative size.

If you wonder why 1,600 km², that's the size of Greater London, so it made calculations easier. For comparison, if you take 1,600 km² of land around the center of New York City you find 10.5 million people.


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## drunkenmunkey888 (Aug 13, 2005)

Tokyo looks absolutely massive from higher altitude in google earth but if you zoom in closer, a lot of the surrounding area is actually really dense farm plots. 

Shanghai on the other hand, looks much smaller than I would've expected. It has a population of over 20 million in the municipality but the built up urban area looks no more than 100 sq miles on google earth.


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## tablemtn (May 2, 2006)

Actually, I was surprised at how small Moscow looks. I thought it would look larger, but a lot of the development consists of dense mid/high-rise apartment blocks.


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## Justme (Sep 11, 2002)

Thorin said:


> Frankfurt IS small. Absolutely no comparizon with Paris or London. It has 600k inhabitants, while Paris and London are aorund 10 milions in the metropolitan area.


Seriously, why did you compare one city's council area with another's metropolitan area? There is simply no logic to what you have just done.

That said, of cause Paris is still a much larger city whichever way you look.

@tablemtn, take another look at Frankfurt and you will see that it is surrounded by a green belt. Then the urban area's continue, sometimes in patches but for quite a distance. Frankfurt is quite spread out because of all the green belts and forests that surround the various urban area's that make up the metropolitan area.


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## sk (Dec 6, 2005)

bigger than it should be : nicosia
for a city of 224k i would call it a sprawling nightmare


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## hudkina (Oct 28, 2003)

brisavoine said:


> I once made the calculation for another thread. If you take 1,600 km² (615 sq. miles) of land around the center of Paris, you find 8.6 million people living within that area. If you take 1,600 km² around the center of London you find 7.6 million people. If you take 1,600 km² around the center of Frankfurt you find 2.3 million people. That gives an idea of each city's relative size.
> 
> If you wonder why 1,600 km², that's the size of Greater London, so it made calculations easier. For comparison, if you take 1,600 km² of land around the center of New York City you find 10.5 million people.


I'm surprised the numbers aren't higher for Paris and London. New York has about the same amount of people but in half the area, and I wouldn't doubt that Los Angeles would have just as many people as London in a comparable area.

Hell, Chicago, San Francisco, and Miami all have about 5 million people in such an area, and even cities like Philadelphia, Detroit, Boston, Washington, and Houston all have over 3 million people in a comparable area.

With the way some people go on about European density and American sprawl, it seems as if they aren't wildly different taken as a whole.


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## timmy- brissy (Aug 28, 2007)

Adelaide's sprawl is huge just for a city of 1 million and 105.000.It certainly shocked me at how it goes into the hills.


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## Cristovão471 (May 9, 2006)

^^ I reckon, once I had to stop over there on route to singapore, they area was massive, for such a small population.


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## Coneslammer (Jun 26, 2006)

Australian cities are probably the sprawliest in the world outside North America. Perth's coastline goes on for about 100km and it only has 1.4million. Canberra has 350,000 and stretches North-West for 35-40km.

Joburg was much bigger than I expected, I hadn't realized how suburbanised the area was.

Looking at pictures or aerials of London always makes me scratch my head as well. Some pictures it looks absolutely dense and massive and in others i'm left wondering how the hell 10 million people fit into relatively moderate density, particularly with so much damn green space around.


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## brisavoine (Mar 19, 2006)

hudkina said:


> I'm surprised the numbers aren't higher for Paris and London. New York has about the same amount of people but in half the area, and I wouldn't doubt that Los Angeles would have just as many people as London in a comparable area.


Well I just made the calculation for LA and if you take 1,600 km² at the center of LA County you find 5.6 million people, i.e. 2 million short of London, and 3 million short of Paris. Of course that figure includes the unpopulated Santa Monica Hills as well as the low density suburbs of the San Fernando Valley, which are all part of the City of Los Angeles. If we substracted these areas and replaced them with more densely populated suburbs east and south of LA, we'd find something like 6 million people in 1,600 km².

For Chicago if you take 1,600 km² around the center of the city you find 4.8 million people.


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## mgk920 (Apr 21, 2007)

BarbaricManchurian said:


> Rio looks tiny compared to its population on Google Earth, but of course that's due to the mountains hemming in the city.


Did you include the inland parts of the city in your Rio de Janeiro observations?

Mike


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## edubejar (Mar 16, 2003)

I was surprised to find out that Berlin's urbanized area is more spread-out than I expected, almost as big as Paris' urbanized area, yet with about half the population. Although Greater Berlin's (contiguous) urbanized area is smaller than Greater Paris', Berlin city-proper is considerably bigger than Paris city-proper, which seemed to have translated in many points of interest being further apart from each other than in Paris, not to mention the mentality in Paris that everything ends at the Périphérique (ring road marking the city limits in most parts). Also, despite Paris taking the credit for wide boulevards and avenues (when comparing to London particularly), it is Berlin with the wider major arterials. That meant that walking took longer from having to cross so many wide roads in Berlin, and traffic seemed zero, which was great for drivers and pedestrians alike. After being in Berlin, London and especially Paris seemed suffocating, not because of the narrower roads alone, but because of the much higher density of people in narrower roads. Of course, Berlin is a much younger city and one can see how this plus its major reconstruction gave her the ability to have an abundance of great, wide roads, on top of a good, extensive public transit.


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## Jardoga (Feb 9, 2008)

timmy- brissy said:


> Adelaide's sprawl is huge just for a city of 1 million and 105.000.It certainly shocked me at how it goes into the hills.


same here


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## karim aboussir (Dec 4, 2006)

orlando sprawl is huge !! for a city of 125,000 and a metro area of 2 million people it is the same size of paris metro area !


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## drunkenmunkey888 (Aug 13, 2005)

I feel like we need to talk about different altitudes too. From several dozen miles up, Sydney looks tiny but from less than a mile altitude, its combined urban/suburban area is massive, possibly larger than that of London. 

Australia is definitely the sprawliest place in the world. I mean Sydney area North America comes in second because though most of Canada and United States are low density suburban sprawl type living styles, there is the American Northeast and Southwest British Columbia where densities equal that of European cities or even Asian cities. Aren't some places in Manhattan equal in density to Hong Kong? On the contrary, there are certain European cities like Denmark or Sweden where there is a comparatively small downtown and huge sprawling suburbs.


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## monkeyronin (May 18, 2006)

drunkenmunkey888 said:


> there is the American Northeast and Southwest British Columbia where densities equal that of European cities or even Asian cities.


Not true, eastern Canada and western United States tend to have the densest cities (urban areas, not city proper). Toronto, Los Angeles, and San Francisco are the 3 densest urban areas in NA going from 3,000-2,500 people/sqkm. New York and Vancouver in comparison, have between 2,000 and 2,500 people/sqkm, and Sydney about 2,500 as well. 

While rather outdated and flawed in some cases, this gives a general idea of various cities urban densities: http://www.citymayors.com/statistics/largest-cities-area-125.html


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## brisavoine (Mar 19, 2006)

edubejar said:


> Berlin's urbanized area is more spread-out than I expected, *almost as big as Paris' urbanized area*, yet with about half the population. *Although Greater Berlin's (contiguous) urbanized area is smaller than Greater Paris'*


Aren't you contradicting yourself?


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## edubejar (Mar 16, 2003)

^^^ Well, I'm saying that Berlin's is *almost* as big as Paris' which = Berlin's is [still] smaller than Paris'. In both cases I'm saying Berlin < Paris but I tried to say that not by very much.


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## hudkina (Oct 28, 2003)

monkeyronin said:


> Not true, eastern Canada and western United States tend to have the densest cities (urban areas, not city proper). Toronto, Los Angeles, and San Francisco are the 3 densest urban areas in NA going from 3,000-2,500 people/sqkm. New York and Vancouver in comparison, have between 2,000 and 2,500 people/sqkm, and Sydney about 2,500 as well.
> 
> While rather outdated and flawed in some cases, this gives a general idea of various cities urban densities: http://www.citymayors.com/statistics/largest-cities-area-125.html


You're comparing two different methods of determining density. While Toronto doesn't have nearly as much exurban sprawl as New York and other American cities, it certainly doesn't have a higher density than New York and certain other American cities.


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## Justme (Sep 11, 2002)

brisavoine said:


> Well I just made the calculation for LA and if you take 1,600 km² at the center of LA County you find 5.6 million people, i.e. 2 million short of London, and 3 million short of Paris. Of course that figure includes the unpopulated Santa Monica Hills as well as the low density suburbs of the San Fernando Valley, which are all part of the City of Los Angeles. *If we substracted these areas and replaced them with more densely populated suburbs east and south of LA, we'd find something like 6 million people in 1,600 km².*
> 
> For Chicago if you take 1,600 km² around the center of the city you find 4.8 million people.


That is similar for London as well. The GLA of 1,600km² also contains many parts of the Greenbelt. If the greenbelt was removed and the urban area's connected but just outside the greenbelt were added it would also be higher.


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## Xusein (Sep 27, 2005)

Coneslammer said:


> Looking at pictures or aerials of London always makes me scratch my head as well. Some pictures it looks absolutely dense and massive and in others i'm left wondering how the hell 10 million people fit into relatively moderate density, particularly with so much damn green space around.


Same here. 

I sometimes think of London as being sprawled out when looking at Google Earth, because of the size. It's huge in area. But then, when looking at all the greenbelts and tight urban planning there, it's like everything is being packed into little parts of the land overall. We just don't do that kind of thing here across the pond. :dunno:


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## Justme (Sep 11, 2002)

10ROT said:


> Same here.
> 
> I sometimes think of London as being sprawled out when looking at Google Earth, because of the size. It's huge in area. But then, when looking at all the greenbelts and tight urban planning there, it's like everything is being packed into little parts of the land overall. We just don't do that kind of thing here across the pond. :dunno:


This is pretty much how it is. The main urban area of London isn't terribly big, and the fact the central city is actually pretty much right in the center (as opposed to say many coastal cities like NY, Boston, Chicago, Sydney etc) it means from the city it doesn't take too long to reach the greenbelt. But there are so many smaller urban area's surrounding the greenbelt.


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## Xusein (Sep 27, 2005)

It's crazy how there are over 7 million people live there though, IMO.

I don't know London's metro population, but it would be interesting what it would be in an American context.


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## Küsel (Sep 16, 2004)

What means "looks" larger? What is the "world avarage" size for 1mio? It totally depends on the morphology, setting, local planning laws and infrastructure of the country and state. I know it from Zurich: hight and density regulations, the protected, lakes, rivers and hills narrow the settlement down. The public transportation system and motorways make a wide urban sprawl possible. Time distances count (commuting from Bern or Basel only takes one hour - same as from the Bronx to lower Manhattan). That all influences the shape and sprawl of a city. 

So strange question although interesting to discuss


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## brisavoine (Mar 19, 2006)

edubejar said:


> ^^^ Well, I'm saying that Berlin's is *almost* as big as Paris' which = Berlin's is [still] smaller than Paris'. In both cases I'm saying Berlin < Paris but I tried to say that not by very much.


I see. However, according to the Geopolis database (they've compiled all the urban areas of the world using satellite pictures), the urban area of Berlin extends over 1,744 km² whereas the urban area of Paris extends over 3,158 km², i.e. 81% more. You know sometimes our eyes can be deceiptful, especially when it comes to measurements of size.


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## brisavoine (Mar 19, 2006)

Justme said:


> That is similar for London as well. The GLA of 1,600km² also contains many parts of the Greenbelt. If the greenbelt was removed and the urban area's connected but just outside the greenbelt were added it would also be higher.


No, you didn't understand. When I talked about 6 million people in 1,600 km² in LA that's a contiguous area, without enclaves or exclaves, but a contiguous area that doesn't encompass the entirety of the City of Los Angeles. What you're suggesting for London is a non contiguous zone that would encompass part of Greater London and then some exclaves outside of Greater London not physically linked to the city at the center.


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## Anderson Geimz (Mar 29, 2008)

10ROT said:


> I don't know London's metro population, but it would be interesting what it would be in an American context.


It has been done. You get 18 million.


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## Anderson Geimz (Mar 29, 2008)

brisavoine said:


> No, you didn't understand. When I talked about 6 million people in 1,600 km² in LA that's a contiguous area, without enclaves or exclaves, but a contiguous area that doesn't encompass the entirety of the City of Los Angeles. What you're suggesting for London is a non contiguous zone that would encompass part of Greater London and then some exclaves outside of Greater London not physically linked to the city at the center.


Your method doesn't mean much though. It puts cities with Green Belts at an automatic disadvantage and benefits cities with continuous sprawl.


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## hudkina (Oct 28, 2003)

Not necessarily. Los Angeles has green belts in the form of major mountain ranges within the metropolitan area. There is a massive "green belt" separating the San Fernando Valley from the rest of the city.


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## drunkenmunkey888 (Aug 13, 2005)

ATHENS!

Athens is a city with only 795,000 people in the city proper and 3.95 million in its entire metro area including Piraeus harbor. But if you go onto google earth, it looks as massive as Tokyo. Athens's buildings are pretty high and dense too, and the whole area looks just like a massive Mediterranean megacity. Based on what you see in google earth, you'd expect Athens to have a population of 7,950,000 and a metro area of 39.5 million.


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## edubejar (Mar 16, 2003)

drunkenmunkey888 said:


> ATHENS!
> 
> Athens is a city with only 795,000 people in the city proper and 3.95 million in its entire metro area including Piraeus harbor. But if you go onto google earth, it looks as massive as Tokyo. Athens's buildings are pretty high and dense too, and the whole area looks just like a massive Mediterranean megacity. Based on what you see in google earth, you'd expect Athens to have a population of 7,950,000 and a metro area of 39.5 million.


Athens looks as massive as Tokyo? Tokyo is the ultimate huge megalopolis. It not only sprawls incredibly but its sprawl is dense.

Maybe you are getting the same impression I got of Barcelona. Barcelona, which also has a dense urban fabric of consistently 7+ floor buildings (where 7 looks like 9 due to their high ceilings) seemed huge to me on aerials, Virtual Earth bird's eye view, and flying over it on the way to Prat Airport from Paris CDG. But when you look at Barcelona's urban footprint relative to other major European cities at the same scale it is tiny. I wouldn't doubt if all of Greater Barcelona (contiguous) is only 2x Manhattan or x1.5 Paris city-proper.

I ignore the limits of Athens city proper but I'm not too surprised that it's around 4 million and not more. Athens and its surburbs are not dotted with many commie blocks and highrise apartments, are they? Maybe this helps explain it, even if Athens is the typical dense Euromed city.

I get the impression that dense coastal cities look bigger in area than they are. The same happens with Tel Aviv. It's smaller than it looks.


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## edubejar (Mar 16, 2003)

brisavoine said:


> I see. However, according to the Geopolis database (they've compiled all the urban areas of the world using satellite pictures), the urban area of Berlin extends over 1,744 km² whereas the urban area of Paris extends over 3,158 km², i.e. 81% more. You know sometimes our eyes can be deceiptful, especially when it comes to measurements of size.


Well first of all, you are right. One is easily deceived by one's eyes when trying to interpret area. Area increases significantly as a circle or square increases in size because each onion layer covers a lot more area than the previous inner layer, and I think this is exponentially increased with each layer. So based on my personal calculation of Paris' urban-*ized* area vs. Berlin's, I get Berlin's being *roughly* 45% (say 50%) that of Paris'. This excludes all preserves/greenbelts (unless surrounded by urbanized land) and all agricultural/farmland, the latter being rare in Paris.

What I should have specified when implying that Greater Berlin is *almost* as big as Greater Paris is that it's when being measured by linear distance from a central point vs. area because area increases dramatically like I said above. And so it follows that walking or taking urban transit (all linear) from various points of interest can be greater in Berlin since Berlin has annexed a lot more of its former suburbs, making Berlin seem less concentrated than Paris.


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## drunkenmunkey888 (Aug 13, 2005)

edubejar said:


> Athens looks as massive as Tokyo? Tokyo is the ultimate huge megalopolis. It not only sprawls incredibly but its sprawl is dense.
> 
> Maybe you are getting the same impression I got of Barcelona. Barcelona, which also has a dense urban fabric of consistently 7+ floor buildings (where 7 looks like 9 due to their high ceilings) seemed huge to me on aerials, Virtual Earth bird's eye view, and flying over it on the way to Prat Airport from Paris CDG. But when you look at Barcelona's urban footprint relative to other major European cities at the same scale it is tiny. I wouldn't doubt if all of Greater Barcelona (contiguous) is only 2x Manhattan or x1.5 Paris city-proper.
> 
> ...


I took a look at Barcelona and it is tiny. Its like one little strip of urban area along the coast. Athens however, looks bigger than any other European city on google earth. Take a look for yourself. It definitely rivals Tokyo just from google earth alone (I am very aware that the real Athens is much smaller in scale and sprawl than Tokyo)


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## The Cebuano Exultor (Aug 1, 2005)

*@ drunkenmunkey888*



> Tokyo looks absolutely massive from higher altitude in google earth but if you zoom in closer, a lot of the surrounding area is actually really dense farm plots.


^^ Yeah. But the density of the farm plots and the, relatively, of each plot makes it appear like a sparsely built-up urban area. IMHO, it is still safe to say that the, relatively, moderate density levels of built-up areas across the Kanto Plain form a more defined single-urban area than...say...the New York Tri-State Area.


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## The Cebuano Exultor (Aug 1, 2005)

*Chicago, New York and Tokyo*

*Chicago*
'Chicagoland' has just about 9.5 million residents but it has the second largest sprawl on the planet (based on what I saw at GoogleEarth).
_Officially, it is the third largest after the New York Tri-State Area and the Greater Tokyo Area._

*New York*
The New York Tri-State Area isn't as impressive looking as Chicago on GoogleEarth. And, the shape of its sprawl isn't very well-defined (based on what I saw at GoogleEarth).

*Tokyo*
By far, the most expansive urban expanse anywhere on Earth (based on what I saw at GoogleEarth).
_Officially, it is the second largest after the New York Tri-State Area._


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## Justme (Sep 11, 2002)

brisavoine said:


> No, you didn't understand. When I talked about 6 million people in 1,600 km² in LA that's a contiguous area, without enclaves or exclaves, but a contiguous area that doesn't encompass the entirety of the City of Los Angeles. What you're suggesting for London is a non contiguous zone that would encompass part of Greater London and then some exclaves outside of Greater London not physically linked to the city at the center.


No. I mean the area of the Greater London Authority is 1,579km², which contains the 7,512,400 people spoken of. This 1,579km² is not all urban as it includes large area's of greenbelt in parts.

However, other parts join onto Greater London in direct urban continuity such as Watford (extending up to and beyond of Hemel Hempstead) etc which are not included of cause in the "1,600km²" you describe, but the sparsely populated greenbelt is. So if you subtracted the greenbelt and added other directly associated urban area's around London _just as you described doing for LA_ then of cause the population would increase.


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## hudkina (Oct 28, 2003)

You could do the same thing for Los Angeles as well. It's not like the mountains don't have the same effect that the green belt has for London...


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## Küsel (Sep 16, 2004)

No it doesn't. The mountain range is a natural obstacle, the Green Belt and the New Towns a planned area. Means that it WOULD be possible to overbuild the Green Belt, time distances are shorter etc.


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## GENIUS LOCI (Nov 18, 2004)

drunkenmunkey888 said:


> ATHENS!
> 
> Athens is a city with only 795,000 people in the city proper and 3.95 million in its entire metro area including Piraeus harbor. But if you go onto google earth, it looks as massive as Tokyo.


Probably it looks as dense as Tokyo (and kinda is similar for its urban cahotic apparently not planned landscape), but it's not as big


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## GENIUS LOCI (Nov 18, 2004)

drunkenmunkey888 said:


> I took a look at Barcelona and it is tiny. Its like one little strip of urban area along the coast.


Yes... and no

Barcelona urban area (not city proper, but metro, of course) is even off the coast: after the mountains which are behind the city






Anyway: why in a thread on satellite pics is there that lack of satellite pics?


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## Justme (Sep 11, 2002)

Küsel said:


> No it doesn't. The mountain range is a natural obstacle, the Green Belt and the New Towns a planned area. Means that it WOULD be possible to overbuild the Green Belt, time distances are shorter etc.


I see your point, but to be honest there is little difference between a mountain range like in LA or Barcelona and a green belt. Sure, a green belt is a planned barrier whilst a mountain range is a natural one. But at the end of the day they are both barriers to urban expansion.

In both cases, the urban area's can be just as easily connected. In LA's case, there is a freeway through a valley (correct me if I'm wrong), In Barcelona it's a tunnel, and in London's greenbelt of cause normal roads and rail.

And come to think of it, from my experience looking at history, it is often easier to tunnel through a mountain than to tunnel through politics ;O)


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## tablemtn (May 2, 2006)

This isn't _directly_ related to the thread title, but on another site, I found two composite images that splice together 12 satellite panels of neighborhoods in various cities, side-by-side, so that you can directly compare the size of the buildings. The images are zoomed in a way that controls for altitude. 

The first panel is below. Top row, left to right: A Mumbai slum, lower Manhattan, and Frisco, Texas (a suburb of Dallas with a lot of new developments). 

Bottom row: Central Paris, an area on the outskirts of Luanda, and a slum in Port-au-Prince.










Second panel is below. Top row: Post-Katrina New Orleans, an area near downtown Mexico City, and a slum area of Karachi.

Bottom row: A housing project in suburban Paris, a slum area of Brasilia, and a posh area of Mumbai


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## edubejar (Mar 16, 2003)

^^^ Very interesting composite of images, tablemtn. Hopefully, they are ALL at the same scale. (Just as a note, it's important that we use the scale bar [View > Scale Legend] to establish the scale of an image in Google Earth, vs the misleading Eye Altitude that appears in the status bar below. The eye altitude is the altitude of the lense from median sea level and not local mean ground surface, so trying to adjust scale with eye altitude for Mexico City vs Houston would be significantly different scales).

It interesting to see from those composites how

1. Paris irregular "blocks" are very big and are the equivalent of many many houses in slums like in Rio, Mumbai, Port-au-Prince, etc. This is partly why Paris city proper seems smaller than it really is because those irregular "blocks" are so large and occupy so much space. Some of those irregular blocks are sometimes very long. The same is true for irregular blocks of other European cities and for regular blocks of Manhattan and Downtown Mexico City which too are the equivalent of many slum houses. This means that slums can be deceiving in appearing very expansive.

2. Commiblock-like housing projects like the one in a Paris suburb (think Moscow, especially) are very large and also occupy a lot of space so a cluster of 10 of those blocks often occupy a lot of land due to their large surrounding green space and parking lots.

3. Low-density suburban sprawl, like the one in Frisco, Texas, a northern suburb of Dallas, is an amazing waste of land. It's incredible how big some of those lots can be for a single house, and how many of those types of subdivisions exist throughout American post-80s subdivisions. The 90s and turn of the century saw a lot of these huge lots.


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## drunkenmunkey888 (Aug 13, 2005)

GENIUS LOCI said:


> Probably it looks as dense as Tokyo (and kinda is similar for its urban cahotic apparently not planned landscape), but it's not as big


Yeah you're right. Upon comparing the two areas at the same altitude with two google earth windows open simultaneously, its blatantly obvious that Athens is only as dense as Tokyo but as far as area goes, it is about 1/10 of the size of metro Tokyo


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## Patrick (Sep 11, 2002)

as for Berlin: The city used to have 4,5 Million people on a smaller built up area 65 years ago. that's one reason why it is pretty spread out today.


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## SuburbanWalker (Jun 23, 2007)

Oh dear... you see that number in the right-bottom corner? That say 20km on both pictures? They ARE on the same scale. And that's the last post I'm going to waste on this idiocy.


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## edubejar (Mar 16, 2003)

SuburbanWalker said:


> Brussels:
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Please use the scale bar in Google Earth when wanting to compare cities at the same scale. Do not rely on Google Earth's Eye Altitude as it is the altitude above mean sea-level (MSL), and not "mean ground level". Since most of us don't know the altitude of cities than we are not sure how equal the comparison is. Thank you.


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## edubejar (Mar 16, 2003)

Here are two maps I've made in ESRI ArcGIS (GIS software) of the contiguous urban built-up of Paris and Berlin, two cities I like a lot. They are are shown here at the same scale, of course. My criteria for determining contiguous urban built-up area were:

1. Contiguous as it appears on the aerial at a scale of 1:72,000
2. Included all green space (parks and preserves that are COMPLETELY surrounded by urban built-up)
3. Excluded all significant ag land or land that looks ag (i.e. adjacent to Orly Aiport in Paris) even if completed surrounded by urban built-up since not Park or Preserves.

Berlin










Paris


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## Anderson Geimz (Mar 29, 2008)

SuburbanWalker said:


> Oh dear... you see that number in the right-bottom corner? That say 20km on both pictures? They ARE on the same scale. And that's the last post I'm going to waste on this idiocy.


Now I'm really convinced that you should have your eyes checked.
They both don't say 20 km. One says 20.00 km and the other says 20.82 km...:|

I'm glad that this was the last post you have wasted on the idiocy YOU started though...


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## Anderson Geimz (Mar 29, 2008)

*btw my maps of Berlin and Paris*



















:cheers:


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## edubejar (Mar 16, 2003)

Anderson Geimz said:


> Now I'm really convinced that you should have your eyes checked.
> They both don't say 20 km. One says 20.00 km and the other says 20.82 km...:|
> 
> I'm glad that this was the last post you have wasted on the idiocy YOU started though...


Well, the Eye Altitude is not the scale anyway. Like I said a couple of posts above, he should use the scale bar. Now, it just occurred to me that it's POSSIBLE he used the scale bar to bring them to the same scale and turned it off just prior to saving the image since it's POSSIBLE that both images at the same given scale shows one city being 0.82 higher than the other. Remember, you don't use Eye Altitude in Google Earth to determine scale but rather the scale bar. I don't know why Google Earth shows that Eye Altitude. Most people are concerned with scale rather than how high they are viewing the city from median sea level. It just confuses MOST people in thinking they can use that as the scale.


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## GENIUS LOCI (Nov 18, 2004)

In any case the pic shows just a part of Rome sprawl


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## clive3300 (Dec 30, 2006)

I certainly think London looks much smaller on Google earth than it feels. When travelling across it by train or car it seems to go on forever, but in fact is less than 40km at its (east-west) widest point, which many new world cities of ~3 million would exceed.


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## SuburbanWalker (Jun 23, 2007)

I don't think I've ever experienced a discussion that resembled the dead parrot sketch from Monthy Python so well.



edubejar said:


> Please use the scale bar in Google Earth when wanting to compare cities at the same scale. Do not rely on Google Earth's Eye Altitude as it is the altitude above mean sea-level (MSL), and not "mean ground level". Since most of us don't know the altitude of cities than we are not sure how equal the comparison is. Thank you.


Surely this is something you could have perfectly well checked for yourself? If you'd do so you'd see the scale is exactly the same from the same height. It's not as if one is beneath sea level and the other in the Himalayas.



GENIUS LOCI said:


> In any case the pic shows just a part of Rome sprawl


The other picture also shows only part of the sprawl around Brussels. Of course, you could see for yourself.

Look, I'm not questioning anyone's manhood. If Rome looks surprisingly small on satellite pictures that's an observation you'll have to live with.


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## GENIUS LOCI (Nov 18, 2004)

clive3300 said:


> but in fact is less than 40km at its (east-west) widest point


Actually it is 60 km


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## GENIUS LOCI (Nov 18, 2004)

SuburbanWalker said:


> If Rome looks surprisingly small on satellite pictures that's an observation you'll have to live with.


I surely can live with that... I just wanna to say Rome sprawl is not that small as normally it is thought: in certain axis can even reach 40 kms... 

Anyway the biggest sprawl in Italy is not rome, but Milan, way wider, and Naples comes for second

Anyway

Rome










Brussels










Scale it is (almost) the same


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## Shezan (Jun 21, 2007)

^^

better you mark the cities borderlines

:cheers:


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## clive3300 (Dec 30, 2006)

GENIUS LOCI said:


> Actually it is 60 km


Where do you get that figure? Heathrow sits at the extreme western edge of the London built up area by looking at Google Earth. And it is officially 15miles (24km) from central London (Charing X?). 

And London seems to stretch much more to the west than the east. 

What are your "from" and "to" points?


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## GENIUS LOCI (Nov 18, 2004)

clive3300 said:


> What are your "from" and "to" points?


M-25 (orbital motroway) diameter

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M25_motorway


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## clive3300 (Dec 30, 2006)

GENIUS LOCI said:


> M-25 (orbital motroway) diameter
> 
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M25_motorway


:lol: the M25 runs in countryside, not in the urban area! You can barely see a farmhouse from most of it. If you dont believe me look on Google Maps: except for a couple of places, the city ends miles inside it - due the green belt.

I still reckon its built up about 40km W-E.


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## GENIUS LOCI (Nov 18, 2004)

clive3300 said:


> If you dont believe me look on Google Maps


Checked.. and I see parts of the urban area reach and overcome M25, overall in West and East

That means London urban area maximum width is 60km and not 40


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## Hebrewtext (Aug 18, 2004)

Tel Aviv metro


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## Chrissib (Feb 9, 2008)

Gush Dan is really very dense!


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## ranny fash (Apr 24, 2005)

to be honest, when you look on Google Earth and check the scale, most larger American cities [>1,000,000 metro] take up a massive amount of space on the ground. 

For example, Indianapolis looks much smaller than London if you're just casually zooming in and out and having a look at neighbourhoods in both cities. but then......check the scale. Indianapolis takes up about the same space as London! it seems ridiculous but that's only because if you're not looking at the scale constantly you can forget how big plots, homes, streets, and buildings are in America. 

When you then consider how dense some cities are, then realise you could fit five Barcelona's in one Indianapolis probably, it seems ridiculous.


places that 'appear' to be huge when viewed on Google Earth. obviously there are the obvious ones - i'm more concerned with cities that seemed much bigger than i thought they would be:

Athens - also very dense
Milan and Napoli
Detroit - absolutely massive! just goes on for miles and miles
Houston - ditto
Sydney - same again
Lima - much denser, genuinely a 'huge' city
Johannesburg
Nagoya - I didn't realise Nagoya was THAT big! it's gigantic.

Major Chinese cities generally look huge but that's fully expected and hardly worth pointing out.


Cities that look smaller than expected:

Pittsburgh
Bucharest
St Petersburg - really doesn't look anywhere near as big as the population suggests it should be
Kolkata
Prague - must be well dense


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## clive3300 (Dec 30, 2006)

GENIUS LOCI said:


> Checked.. and I see parts of the urban area reach and overcome M25, overall in West and East
> 
> That means London urban area maximum width is 60km and not 40


Fair enough, I agree with you. Thanks for the analysis.


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## De Prodigy (Nov 3, 2009)

When I discovered Google Earth I noticed that US,Canadian and Australian cities are much vaster that I thought. Like a guy said before "LA or NY are monsters". But yes, it's cuz in those countries the cities aren't very dense if you compare them to Europeans. (exept for NY).


Speaking for Europe: Madrid, Rome, Moscow, Prague, Bucharest, Sofia, ... are much smaler than I thought they would be!
On the other hand: Koln, Rotterdam, Lyon, Vienna, Birmingham, Copenhagen and even my hometown Brussels are bigger than I thought.

I must forgot some other cities, but these are the first am thinking of


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## tigerboy (Jun 7, 2006)

Chicagoago said:


> I'd believe that. I was driving back into the city today, and when I finally reached the urban area of suburbs, I was excited I was finally "home". I always remember pretty quick that it's still a little over 100KM until I actually get into the heart of the city where I live. The suburbs just go on FOREVER in all direction (except into the lake of course).
> 
> I'm use to living here, so it's just normal to have such a vague massive built up area of suburbs that all seem the same to me. I was on a road trip all over the southern USA though, and it was kinda shocking how small the footprint of other cities are.
> 
> ...


You see this is a very valid point. The bigger US cities EG Chicago have official metros of about 30,000 kms sq. This is the size of Belgium !!!!! Belgium with a pop density of 354 per km sq is more densely populated than Chicago CSA at 348 per sq km.The areas of US MSA/CSAs are so large as to make little sense and render comparison with other countries essentially meaningless. EG The LA CSA has a greater area than Belgium and the Netherlands combined and a far smaller population.

Chicagoago's point that many Chicagoland residents rarely if ever visit the city centre is explained partly by the fact that many live in areas with the most tenuous link to the city centre - areas which is Europe would be regarded as beyond the reach of the metro area and for all intents and purposes ARE beyond it.

Quite frankly comparative figures based on US census MSAs and CSAs are worthless.


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## Chicagoago (Dec 2, 2005)

tigerboy said:


> You see this is a very valid point. The bigger US cities EG Chicago have official metros of about 30,000 kms sq. This is the size of Belgium !!!!! Belgium with a pop density of 354 per km sq is more densely populated than Chicago CSA at 348 per sq km.The areas of US MSA/CSAs are so large as to make little sense and render comparison with other countries essentially meaningless. EG The LA CSA has a greater area than Belgium and the Netherlands combined and a far smaller population.
> 
> Chicagoago's point that many Chicagoland residents rarely if ever visit the city centre is explained partly by the fact that many live in areas with the most tenuous link to the city centre - areas which is Europe would be regarded as beyond the reach of the metro area and for all intents and purposes ARE beyond it.
> 
> Quite frankly comparative figures based on US census MSAs and CSAs are worthless.


I see your point, but the 30,000 square KM is misleading. That's the total size of the counties that make up the Chicago metro. A VAST majority of people in the Chicago MSA or CSA are living on a portion of that total land area that is continuously built up. The rest are included in counties that are pulled into the MSA or CSA, but they are almost entirely farmland or very small towns. Grundy/Newton counties have a few thousand sq/KM, but only 50K people total.

Most of the people who live in the suburban areas who might never ever come into the city proper are still living in areas that look like this:




























They just might be living 100KM from downtown Chicago. There's still no denying that they're obviously in the Chicago urban area though. Their subdivisions and suburbs wouldn't exist if it weren't for Chicago. At least not in the highly built environment they are.

It's a very vast city, and even though it has low population density - it's still clearly a city. They aren't just outlying districts who have nothing to do with Chicago that might be pulled in. Those are just a few small farmtowns here and there on the far reaches.

You really would never "drive across town" if you're going from the northwest suburbs to the southeast suburbs. It would take you hours.

Once you get out of the suburbs you face thousands of KM of this:










There really aren't as many small towns, houses in the country, etc. as you tend to find in Europe. Here's it's more vast areas of farms with farmers ever so often. You'll certainly find small towns of a few hundred people, and little cities every once in awhile, but nothing like I saw in the rural areas of Europe.


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## isakres (May 13, 2009)

Mumbai and Calcutta looks tiny for me.........Miami and Orlando loooks huge!


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## city_thing (May 25, 2006)

Melbourne only looks huge because it's a sprawling mess of a city...


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## limerickguy (Mar 1, 2009)

Downtown Dublin, Ireland





































south side of the city


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## Wunderknabe (Jun 29, 2010)

Right. Beautiful. But does it look smaler or bigger than you thought? And why?

For me Dublin looks almost exactly like what I expected.


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## gabrielbabb (Aug 11, 2006)

Madrid looks very tiny, Miami and LA massive, Buenos Aires looks bigger, European cities are just weird and streets look too disordered (even more than latinamerican cities) also asian cities


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## Extare (Nov 26, 2008)

city_thing said:


> Melbourne only looks huge because it's a sprawling mess of a city...


What's with the tiny circle in the middle?


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## Blindfold (Jan 22, 2006)

^^ I've always loved Melbourne's 'shape'. Have always wondered why the city sprawls the farthest to the east and south-east but not to the west?


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## The Cebuano Exultor (Aug 1, 2005)

*@ city_thing*

Is Melbourne's urban sprawl bigger than Sydney's? :?


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## Plateau Mont-Royal (Sep 21, 2009)

Tel Aviv is actually a pretty smal city. Jerusalem is more than twice the size. If count the metro however, then Tel Aviv gets much bigger.


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## Matthew Lowry (Dec 23, 2009)

Tokyo and Cape Town looks small on google earth but is realy big. Tokyo is far bigger you could be driving 80 km and you haven left tokyo


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## Plateau Mont-Royal (Sep 21, 2009)

I thought Tokyo looked GIGANTIC on google earth. Much bigger than I thought.


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## Chrissib (Feb 9, 2008)

I was surprized by New York, I always thought it would be a very compact city, but the sprawl beats all, 140km in diameter, much bigger than LA. Chicago is also a surprize.


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## Matthew Lowry (Dec 23, 2009)

Tokyo is innsane its much bigger then you thought like its takes me 5 train lines to get to work.


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## aaabbbccc (Mar 8, 2009)

Chrissib said:


> I was surprized by New York, I always thought it would be a very compact city, but the sprawl beats all, 140km in diameter, much bigger than LA. Chicago is also a surprize.


the population of NY city is 6 million ? but if you include the entire metro region it is up to 25 million ? correct me if I am wrong


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## limerickguy (Mar 1, 2009)

limerickguy said:


> Downtown Dublin, Ireland
> 
> 
> 
> ...



I meant to say Dublin was a lot more spread out than i would have imagined, eventhough im Irish you still dont realise how much bigger it looks like from the air.

Its got horrible urban sprawl, almost twice the urban footprint as amsterdam which is the same population and the same sized urban footprint as berlin!
recently it was established that should it continue to grow at the same rate, in 20 years it will be the same size (in area) as LA! 

I have the articals to back it up if anyone doesnt believe me!


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## Chrissib (Feb 9, 2008)

aaabbbccc said:


> the population of NY city is 6 million ? but if you include the entire metro region it is up to 25 million ? correct me if I am wrong


Population of NYC is 8,391,881 in 2009
Population of the New York metropolitan area (the widest definition) is 22,043,766 in 2009. 

Source: citypopulation.de


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## Hebrewtext (Aug 18, 2004)

Plateau Mont-Royal said:


> Tel Aviv is actually a pretty smal city. Jerusalem is more than twice the size. If count the metro however, then Tel Aviv gets much bigger.


Tel Aviv municipality 390,000

Tel Aviv metro ~3.5 -5 million

pop. living up to 1 hour drive around the city 11 million




Uploaded with ImageShack.us


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## gabrielbabb (Aug 11, 2006)

Mexico City looks small for me , you may say its not but compared to a lot of cities it looks small having almost 20million inhabitants


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## oliver999 (Aug 4, 2006)

CNGL said:


> The chinese cities look to me smaller than they are.


yes, no surburb sprawl


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## caduroxbr (Dec 17, 2009)

Plz post Sao Paulo density...
Or wait this weekend, bcause i cant post now.


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## The Cebuano Exultor (Aug 1, 2005)

*Mexico City's Ugly Sprawl*

From satellite pictures, Mexico City looks too disorganized, IMHO.

There are areas of unbelievable built-up density and then, right next to it are large open tracks of land. What the heck is up with that? Are there zoning regulations that prohibit one of Mexico's dense poor eastern neighborhoods from sprawling further east?

What's also striking is the apparent lack of a circumferential road that binds the entire metropolitan area together. The lay-out of the road network is so out-dated with its hub-and-spoke design.


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## gabrielbabb (Aug 11, 2006)

Really? ^^ I think asian cities look more disorganized, at least we have straight streets and avenues crossing all the city and those in asia are weird, and yes there are some rules and places where you can't build because they were planned or because they are protected areas, or private (militar), but still there have been built some extreme poor zones on those protected zones.

But that is also normal in many mexican and Latinamerican cities


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## caduroxbr (Dec 17, 2009)

[/QUOTE]

SAO PAULO MEGALOPOLIS (Sao Paulo metro area + Jundiai + Campinas Metro Area + Santos + Sao Jose dos Campos metro area)
And in the future, Rio.


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