I came across this interactive world population density map over the weekend and I immediately thought to myself, "this is going on the blog." It uses data from the Global Human Settlement Layer (GHSL) produced by the European Commission and by CIESIN (super long name) at Columbia University. And it's a fascinating way to explore how our world is urbanizing.

What you will want to do is make sure that you head over to China and check out regions like the Yangtze River Delta (shown above). If you hover over a location, it will also bring up a graph and table showing you how that place has evolved from 1975 to 2015. Note: Shanghai's peak population density in 2015 was 104,400 people per square kilometer!

Here is an interactive map, created by the Robert Redford Conservancy for Southern California Sustainability, showing the approximately 1,573,777,062 square feet of industrial space that can be found in Los Angeles, Riverside, and San Bernardino.

The map allows you to zoom in on specific parcels to see things like site area, warehouse size, and year built. You can also play around with different map radii to create a rollup of warehouse space within a specific area, which includes an estimate of daily truck traffic and CO2 produced.

The Guardian also used this data to create the following chart, which is helpful in showing the dominance of certain cities, as well as how much of this industrial space has been built since 2010:

The point of this interactive map, this data, and the accompanying articles is to highlight just how disruptive all of this new industrial space is to these southern California communities and to the environment in general. But I think it is also an important reminder that, whether we like it or not, our online activities have real-world physical implications.

Online shopping requires warehouses and logistics. Online food delivery requires (ghost) kitchens. And online activity, in general, requires the storage of unprecedented amounts of data. All of these "back-end spaces" take up room, even if they're mostly easy to ignore when we're just looking at our phones.

This is our new "phygital" world and, yes, it is changing the landscape of our cities. Now our task is to figure out how to do this in a way that respects communities and respects the environment.

Atlantic Cities recently published an article called, “Beefing Up Population Density Won’t Curb Greenhouse Gas Emissions.” And in it, they link to a really neat interactive map created at UC Berkeley that outlines the carbon emissions of nearly every zip code in America (2013 numbers). 

Not surprisingly, it shows that urban folk generally have a much smaller carbon footprint as compared to suburbanites. Here’s what New York City looks like (green is lower carbon emissions and red is higher):

But the article also goes on to say that the solution is not to work towards increasing population densities in either urban centers or suburbs. And that, in fact, efforts to increase population densities in the suburbs would only make things worse–emission levels have been shown to only go up and then new suburbs end up getting formed around the intensified ones.

I understand the last point about endless suburbs, but I don’t fully understand this recommendation. Do carbon emissions go up in the suburbs when population densities are increased because it still remains car dependent and so all you have is more people driving?

Intuitively, it would seem that if more people stopped driving, shopped locally and lived in more compact spaces, carbon emissions would fall. But perhaps I’m missing something.

If anyone has any insights on this topic, I would love to hear from you in the comment section below or on twitter.