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If you pan over to the left......to get to the US on that map.........wow........With all the growth of the West and South the last few decades.......the Great lakes area still looks like a beast in regards to population. If you ignore state lines that line from Chicago to Cleveland and 100 miles north and south is heavily populated. The area from Atlanta to Charlotte is pretty impressive too. Kind of surprised that Texas metros seem really do not run together.....and out west just looks like empty space. Of course, nothing compares to the Northeast corridor.
If you zoom the scale to 20KM [___] and add up the csa population you can get in a frame........you get surprising results....at least I did. 23 million for the Chicago to Cleveland frame. Might vary based upon the size of your monitor.
If you pan over to the left......to get to the US on that map.........wow........With all the growth of the West and South the last few decades.......the Great lakes area still looks like a beast in regards to population. If you ignore state lines that line from Chicago to Cleveland and 100 miles north and south is heavily populated. The area from Atlanta to Charlotte is pretty impressive too. Kind of surprised that Texas metros seem really do not run together.....and out west just looks like empty space. Of course, nothing compares to the Northeast corridor.
If you zoom the scale to 20KM [___] and add up the csa population you can get in a frame........you get surprising results....at least I did. 23 million for the Chicago to Cleveland frame.
Maps like this make the farming heritage of the Midwestern U.S. pretty clear. Basically most of the tiny to midsized lights you see in the Midwest are the old county seats. Rural areas in the pre-automotive area needed to have a focal point for commerce, and that was usually the county seat, where the major state routes also tended to intersect. Although the need for farm employment has decreased, these local agglomerations of population have remained due to momentum.
In contrast, out west there was never as much farming - some ranching, but that doesn't require as many people. Small towns and cities often sprung up around mining and logging camps, but many of these essentially became ghost towns already by the mid 20th century. Growth in the west is almost entirely absorbed by the major metros, meaning the rural hinterlands (much of which are actually owned by the federal government) remain almost empty.
Also - this is not a map of population density. This is just a map of the world at night. This can be seen if you go to say South Korea or Vietnam and see how many lights (from fishing boats) are in the ocean. Or what appears to be fires in Western Australia.
Also - this is not a map of population density. This is just a map of the world at night. This can be seen if you go to say South Korea or Vietnam and see how many lights (from fishing boats) are in the ocean. Or what appears to be fires in Western Australia.
True....its not a map of population density....but of metro area lights. I noticed those lights off the coast of Nigeria too. I thought it was from off shore oil drilling.
One of the things that's always caught my eye viewing such maps is how quickly the US empties out if you draw a line north from Ft Worth, TX (aka "where the West begins"). That, and how lit up NW N Dakota is (we know it's at lest semi-booming, but most of that is, as with other areas, fire and light from shale processing).
The map is both beautiful and thought-provoking (and makes you thankful you paid attention during your Geography classes!)
1 - looking at the Appalachian mountains from VA, WV, MD and through PA you can see where development skipped to the other side pretty clearly west of say Harrisburg and then developed again on the other side with Pittsburgh and NE ohio etc.
2 - The concentration of the SE coast of FL - pretty intense in this image
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