Mick Hartley

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The Concrete Forest

From the In Focus gallery Population Seven Million: 

Pops_s06
[Photo: Reuters/Bobby Yip]

Public residential buildings are seen in Po Lam, one of the "satellite towns" in Hong Kong, on September 14, 2011. This southern Chinese city is described as a concrete forest, famous for the number of high-rise commercial and residential towers. About 25 percent of the world's tallest 100 residential buildings stand in the territory.

By the end of the month the world's population, according to the UN Population Fund, will reach 7 billion. Which is, I think we can all agree, a lot of people. But at least – look on the bright side – it's "the world's population", not "the population of the planet". "The tallest buildings on the planet…", "the largest moth on the planet...", "the deepest lake on the planet…". Bah. I blame David Attenborough.

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6 responses to “The Concrete Forest”

  1. Dom Avatar
    Dom

    This is an interesting chart: http://persquaremile.com/2011/01/18/if-the-worlds-population-lived-in-one-city/
    If you find the population density of NY acceptable, then 7 billion people can fit in Texas alone.

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  2. Mick H Avatar
    Mick H

    Yes interesting, but is Paris really more densely populated than New York?

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  3. Martin Adamson Avatar
    Martin Adamson

    The people in those buildings have the right to live anywhere in China. Indeed the price of those flats would probably buy you a decent suburban home pretty much anywhere else. Whatever the picture is illustrating, it is not over-population.

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  4. Dom Avatar
    Dom

    I was surprised by the ranking of the cities, but according to Wiki, Paris is exactly twice as dense as NY. Even more surprising is that NY in turn is more dense than Singapore.

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  5. Martin Adamson Avatar
    Martin Adamson

    I think there are 2-3 million New Yorkers living densely in Manhattan, and the rest living in 4 other boroughs, which are all pretty much suburban. Paris is, strictly speaking, the 20 arrondisements within the ring-road, so effectively has no suburbs. Singapore probably means the whole island-state.

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  6. Trofim Avatar
    Trofim

    But I understand that the entire population of the world could fit onto the Isle of Wight, if they don’t mind putting their hands by their sides and breathing in. In fact, if scientists would only get their fingers out they could easily fit individual minds onto a microchip, and then the population of the world could be kept in the cupboard under my stairs. Let’s face it, having a body is such a nuisance, anyway. And if the scientists would stop dabbling in trivial things, and really put their minds to it, they could fit each individual mind into a zeptoometre, everyone could have a virtual body and the population of the world could be fitted on to the head of a pin. It makes so much sense. I mean the idea of humans needing space for their quality of life, is sooooo yesterday.

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