Population density map of US, as of 2000 (real estate, pros and cons)

[mike0421]

Originally Posted by Ben Around

You don't even have to leave the county. For example, driving east out of San Diego on I-8, you are quickly in sparsely-populated mountains, then the desert, before you reach the county line.

I was just on I-8. You hit Julian, then the Indian Casino, then you begin the descent into Imperial Valley, and neighboring Imperial County. The eastern edge of San Diego County looks like the moon. No one would ever suspect they were in one of the most populated counties in the country.

[Ben Around]

Originally Posted by Waterlily

Well I could wish we had the color code to go with the map.

Yes it would be nice if people spread out in the country a bit.

Why would that be nice? At the rate we are sprawling our suburbs and depopulating our central cities, we are headed in this direction for sure and I don't like it one bit. I like the fact that we still have some large, dense, urban areas left, as well as vast unpoulated areas of plains, forests, mountain ranges, swampland, etc. Variety is the spice of life, purple mountain majesty, fruited plains, etc.

[CTownNative]

Originally Posted by mike0421

I was just on I-8. You hit Julian, then the Indian Casino, then you begin the descent into Imperial Valley, and neighboring Imperial County. The eastern edge of San Diego County looks like the moon. No one would ever suspect they were in one of the most populated counties in the country.

It also shows just how dense some cities are,that even when alot of a county is sparsly populated,the city is so dense that it can make the density rate of the county high.

[18Montclair]

I like this map too-I really like how the West is so removed...very cool and shows how vast our nation is.
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/NewImages/Images/us_population_2005_lrg.jpg (broken link)

[ElkHunter]

Originally Posted by 18Montclair

I like this map too-I really like how the West is so removed...very cool and shows how vast our nation is.
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/NewImages/Images/us_population_2005_lrg.jpg (broken link)

I would have loved to see this map for 1960, 1980, 2000. Just to see how the Eastern population moves West.

[Othon]

Im surprised to see Kenedy county, Texas as a white county. Its beautiful, on the coast, right in between Corpus Christi and the Valley, and a highway (soon to be interstate) passes through it. It seems to be the only county on the coast to be white.

[SteelCityRising]

Besides ChiPitts and BosWash, does anyone else notice the beginnings of a "RalAnta" as well, with nothing but dense counties linking Raleigh/Durham, NC to Atlanta, GA? I realize there is a lot of distance between Raleigh/Durham and Charlotte, Charlotte and Greenville/Spartanburg, and Greenville/Spartanburg and Atlanta, but as these cities continue to bleed outwards with urban sprawl, I wonder if I'll live to see the day when the East Coast officialy has a third megalopolis area from NC to GA?

Another thing I didn't realize was just how edgy the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre MSA in Northeastern PA truly is. Our two counties (Lackawanna & Luzerne) are in the deepest shade of blue, yet just to our north and west are some larger, rural, agricultural counties. Just to our south and east are the beginnings of the NYC/Philadelphia commuter belt areas (Lehigh Valley, Poconos, North Jersey). With that said though it's nice to live here in Scranton and be able to take a day-trip to see the Franklin Institute in Philly or a Broadway show in Manhattan while spending the next day taking a day-trip two hours northwest via beautiful U.S. Route 6 to the PA Grand Canyon. Sometimes it's nice to be in a "squeeze-play" of sorts---you can have the best of both worlds!

[bigtallredhead]

Originally Posted by LittleMissSunshine

It looks like NJ is the ONLY state where the entire thing is dark blue. I can't believe it can be dark blue in Cumberland County or Sussex County. When I am there I feel like I am in the middle of the wilderness. I guess if I really went to the wilderness I'd be in for a big suprise lol.

Probably so. I have been trough rural Nevada, -talk about sparsely populated! and yes people do live there, on ranches and widely scattered small towns. Beautiful desert and mountain scenery, but the feeling of vastness and emptiness (of humanity, roads, buildings or large trees) I did find truly overwhelming, and rather disorienting in fact.

Being from California where fairly dense counties also have large sparsely populated areas within them (true all over the west) and having been to the more sparsely populated parts of the state, I am familiar with truly rural areas. But still, Nevada was something else. Georgios though, and most of it is public land.

[bigtallredhead]

Originally Posted by gnubler

Here's an interesting visual. Seems to be split almost exactly down the middle, except for California throwing off the balance. I sure am glad I don't live in the eastern half. What I really want is to live in one of the white-colored areas. You breed, like rats.



I apologize. I don't think I can link the color code to this page. Here's the link on Wikipedia: Image:USA-2000-population-density.gif - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Cool map! -Emil.

[recycled]

Originally Posted by mike0421

As an ex resident of the Garden State, and a current resident of the Land Of Enchantment, you have no idea, Little Miss Sunshine. Saturday night, I drove back home from Bisbee Arizona. 250 miles. The first part of the trip was driving up Rt 80 (not Rt 80 in NJ) from Douglas Arizona (border town) to Lordsburg NM. It was about 100 miles, on a one lane road. In the time I drove it, I saw a total of 4 cars, and 3 snakes.

The sense of scale here is nothing a New Jerseyan can relate to, unless they actually bore witness to it. I used to drive to work from Las Cruces NM to Holloman AFB, about 60 miles away. During the course of that drive, the sightlines between mountain ranges (Organs to the Sacramentos) are about 70 miles. When you are in the middle of the Tularosa Basin, you feel like you can just reach out and grab both mountain ranges at the same time. The comparison in distance between these two mountain ranges would be the equivalent of driving in Dover NJ and being able to see the Delaware River and the George Washington Bridge at the same time, and seem them both clearly. Translated: there are no trees, and no people. Just vast nothingness.

Excellent description Mike. I lived in north Jersey a few years in the early 90s, and I enjoyed it a lot, but agree you don't have the sense of "elbow room" that you do in many western states. I drove the exact road you described from Bisbee to Lordsburg last November, on the east side of the Chiracahua Mtns. There's one tiny town along the way near the AZ-NM border. I only saw a couple of cars, not counting several border patrol trucks. They had stopped at a place where a few immigrants had died in an attempt to walk north following the old RR line that parallels the road. That's how remote it is around there. It's a little too remote for my taste, almost instills a fear inside.

Have you noticed the large increase in visitors from Europe visiting the western US in recent years? The most common language in most national parks in the west seems to be German. The weak dollar right now makes it a bargain to visit here for them, and the reason they like visiting the western states is to experience the vast open lands, the "big sky", the vast emptiness. Nowhere in central Europe can you get that feel, you are never more than a few kilometers to the next village or town or road. It's the same story for folks living along the I-95 northeast corridor, the I-85 southeast corridor or the upper midwest corridor, or most anywhere else near the mega metro areas in the US.