Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
World Population Distribution and Density
From the beginning of humanity, people have been
unevenly distributed over the land. Today, contrasts
between crowded countrysides and bustling cities on the
one hand and empty reaches on the other hand have only
intensifi ed. Historically, people tended to congregate in
places where they could grow food—making for a high
correlation between arable land and population density.
Cities began in agricultural areas, and for most of history,
people lived closest to the most agriculturally productive
areas. In recent history, advances in agricultural technol-
ogy and in transportation of agricultural goods have
begun to change this pattern.
At the global scale, where one dot on a map repre-
sents 100,000 people, three major clusters of population
jump out (Fig. 2.5). Each of the three largest population
clusters is on the Eurasian (Europe and Asia combined)
landmass. The fourth largest is in North America.
with a rapidly growing population. As in East Asia, the
overwhelming majority of the people here are farmers,
but in South Asia the pressure on the land is even greater.
In Bangladesh, over 152 million people, almost all of them
farmers, are crowded into an area about the size of Iowa.
Over large parts of Bangladesh the rural population den-
sity is between 3000 and 5000 people per square mile. By
comparison, in 2010 the population of Iowa was just about
3 million people, and the rural population density was 53
people per square mile.
Europe
An axis of dense population extends from Ireland and the
United Kingdom into Russia and includes large parts of
Germany, Poland, Ukraine, and Belarus. It also includes
the Netherlands and Belgium, parts of France, and north-
ern Italy. This European cluster contains over 715 million
inhabitants, less than half the population of the South Asia
cluster. A comparison of the population and physical maps
indicates that in Europe terrain and environment are not
as closely related to population distribution as they are in
East and South Asia. For example, note the lengthy exten-
sion in Figure 2.5, which protrudes far into Russia. Unlike
the Asian extensions, which refl ect fertile river valleys, the
European extension refl ects the orientation of Europe's
coal fi elds. If you look closely at the physical map, you will
note that comparatively dense population occurs even in
mountainous, rugged country, such as the boundary zone
between Poland and its neighbors to the south. A much
greater correspondence exists between coastal and river
lowlands and high population density in Asia than in
Europe generally.
Another contrast can be seen in the number of Euro-
peans who live in cities and towns. The European popula-
tion cluster includes numerous cities and towns, many of
which developed as a result of the Industrial Revolution.
In Germany, 88 percent of the people live in urban
places; in the United Kingdom, 89 percent; and in France,
74 percent. With so many people concentrated in the
cities, the rural countryside is more open and sparsely
populated than in East and South Asia (where only about
40 percent of the people reside in cities and towns).
The three major population concentrations we have
discussed—East Asia, South Asia, and Europe—account
for over 4 billion of the total world population of 7 billion
people. Nowhere else on the globe is there a population
cluster even half as great as any of these. The populations
of South America and Africa combined barely exceed the
population of India alone.
East Asia
Although the distribution map (Fig. 2.5) requires no color
contrasts, Figure 2.6 depicts population density through
shading: the darker the color, the larger the number of
people per unit area. The most extensive area of dark
shading lies in East Asia, primarily in China but also in
Korea and Japan. Almost one-quarter of the world's popu-
lation is concentrated here—over 1.34 billion people in
China alone.
In addition to high population density in China's
large cities, ribbons of high population density extend
into the interior along the Yangtze and Yellow River val-
leys. Farmers along China's major river valleys produce
crops of wheat and rice to feed not only themselves but
also the population of major Chinese cities such as Shang-
hai and Beijing.
South Asia
The second major population concentration also lies in
Asia and is similar in many ways to that of East Asia. At the
heart of this cluster of more than 1.5 billion people lies
India. The concentration extends into Pakistan and Ban-
gladesh and onto the island of Sri Lanka. Here, people
again cluster in major cities, on the coasts, and along rivers,
such as the Ganges and Indus. The South Asia population
cluster is growing more rapidly than the others as a result
of China's declining total fertility rate (TFR). Demogra-
phers predict that by 2030, 1 out of 6 people in the world
will live in India.
Two physical geography barriers create the bound-
aries of the South Asia population cluster: the Himalaya
Mountains to the north and the mountains west of the
Indus River Valley in Pakistan. This is a confi ned region
North America
North America has one quite densely populated region,
stretching along the urban areas of the East Coast, from
