Tuesday, June 16, 2009

ELBOW ROOM, ELBOW ROOM, GOTTA GOTTA GETCHA SOME ELBOW ROOM: Apropos of nothing but the fact that this was the kind of thing that my college roommate Woody and I would have geeked out about, did you know that Cambridge, Massachusetts is the fourth-most densely populated city in America, two spots ahead of Chicago? That El Monte, Norwalk, Garden Grove, and Downey -- four LA-area suburbs or exurbs that I think may not even have any residential buildings taller than two stories -- made the top 25, while Baltimore, Detroit, and Oakland did not? That America's most densely populated city (New York, duh) not only did not make the list of the 35 densest cities in the world, but that it was less than a quarter as dense as the #1 city, Dhaka? (113,000 people per square mile? That's insane.) That Paris and Barcelona are denser than Hong Kong proper or Shanghai? I mean, I had never even heard of some of the cities on the world list. Obviously, I find this endlessly fascinating.

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