Urban Density or Urban Sprawl?

As urbanization is increasing fast around the globe, how dense or how sprawling are the world's large urban spaces? It depends on the country, a survey by Demographia shows. While Asian nations tend to have more compact urban spaces, countries like the United States and Russia lean more towards urban sprawl even in very big cities, resulting in a lot of exaggerated soil sealing in these areas. While China houses 12,000 people per square mile and India does as many as 28,000 on average, these figures are just around 3,300 in the U.S. and 6,600 in Russia. However, due to China's and India's large population numbers, their share of the globe's large urban spaces with more than 500,000 inhabitants is 19 percent and 11 percent, respectively, also leading to the coverage of a lot of natural surface with buildings, roads and other potentially harmful obstructions. In the U.S. and Russia, these figures stand at 8 percent and 4 percent.

Japan, known for its large and dense urban cityscapes, only houses around 10,000 people per square mile on average in its large urban conglomerations, which make up 1.7 percent of the globe's total. Brazil and Mexico surpass this at 12,000-13,000, as do Nigeria (15,000) and Iran (18,000). Other countries with very dense large urban spaces are Colombia (38,000), the Democratic Republic of the Congo (40,000) and finally a country known for its extra dense cities, Bangladesh (55,000).