Rae describes Spain as “both very dense and very empty”, with most people living in cities such as Madrid and Barcelona. Photo: Eurostat
How does Malta compare to similar-sized cities?
The high rate of lived density across several microstates suggests that a better way to view Malta’s urban density would be to treat it as a city-state, analysing its population density in relation to other similar-sized cities and urban areas around Europe.
Malta’s land size of just 316km2 makes it smaller than many other major European cities, with some notable exceptions.
For instance, Scotland’s capital of Edinburgh has a total land area of just 264km2, while Birmingham is a similarly compact 268km2. Other cities, such as Riga, Vienna, and Munich are also similar in size to Malta.
The density in each of these cities ranges between just over 1,700 people per square kilometre in neighbouring Catania to over 7,500 in Bucharest and Milan, with the average density across all cities analysed being just over 3,750.Malta’s density of 1,720 lies towards the lower end of this range, suggesting that Malta’s urban density is similar to that of most cities of roughly the same size.
What about Malta’s densest areas?
The 2021 census found that Sliema is now Malta’s most densely populated town, with almost 20,000 people per square kilometre, only slightly fewer than Paris, the most densely populated city in Europe.
Eurostat data estimates a slightly lower figure, suggesting that the densest 1km2 stretch of land in Malta is home to 13,725 inhabitants. This would put it alongside the densest areas of Riga, Krakow and Cologne and a little below the 18,000 in nearby Catania’s busiest areas.
Several other cities have significantly denser urban centres, frequently exceeding 25,000 people in their busiest 1km2 stretch.
Urban sprawl
Data taken from the European Commission’s Global Human Settlement Layer, a database for measuring urbanisation, gives us a glimpse into urban sprawl across several cities by calculating how many people live within a specific distance of the city’s centre.
This data shows that roughly 480,000 people live within a 10km radius of central Malta, incorporating Malta’s densest towns in the harbour areas as well as other busy towns such as Birkirkara, Mosta and Paola.
This is a similar rate to Catania and Edinburgh and a little lower than Krakow, Oslo and Marseille, both of which are home to roughly 800,000 people within a 10km radius of their centres.
All other cities in this analysis, on the other hand, register over 1m inhabitants within this same area, with Bucharest and Milan both approaching 2m residents.
Verdict
Experts believe that lived density may be a more useful metric to measure a country’s urbanisation than traditional measures of population density.
Malta’s lived density is nonetheless amongst the highest in Europe, in line with that of other similar microstates such as Monaco and Andorra.
When compared to several similar-sized cities around Europe, Malta tends to have a lower population density and fewer people living within 10km of its centre.
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Source link : https://timesofmalta.com/article/factcheck-does-malta-highest-population-density-europe.1049809
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Publish date : 2023-08-17 07:00:00
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