From maps to speculation

Rachel Strohm has two interesting posts on Kinshasha in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Well, she might have many others, but there are two which got my attention.

Visualizing Kinshasha's population is the first one.

I recently came across a fascinating post from The Pudding visualizing the populations of cities around the world as mountains. (H/t to Naunihal Singh, who shares lots of other similarly interesting things as well.) Let’s check out how Kinshasa’s 13 million people look compared to other places with similar populations.

What really stands out to me about Kin is its extreme concentration. Population density drops off dramatically as soon as one leaves the city. I recall being struck by this on a trip to Matadi a few years ago, where hours went by without passing any settlement larger than 10 or so houses.

Click to enlarge.

Conversely, London’s population is much more evenly distributed both within the city itself and across the surrounding area.

Click to enlarge.

Bengaluru points to yet another model for distributing the population. The city itself is densely populated, and surrounded by a lot of fairly dense towns, but relatively few people in between the towns themselves. This presumably reflects the larger role that agriculture plays in the Indian economy compared to the British. London’s suburbs stretch on without being interrupted by fields quite so often.

Click to enlarge.

Fascinating to see these different distribution patters.

I am guessing that these differences in distribution patterns has a lot to do with differences in transportation configuration. Deep concentration is facilitated by intra town transportation. A smooth distribution of a large population across a wide area (the London model) reflects good intra-city transportation combined with good inter-city transport such as rail, highways and bus. The shotgun blast distribution (Bengaluru) reflects good within a city but poor intracity transportation. Perhaps

Her scond post is “Kinshasa is only slightly better connected to the global economy than the North Pole” is also related to transportation in Kinshasha.

Matt Daniels notes that Kinshasa, with its 13 million residents, has about 13 outbound flights each day. That’s just slightly more than Barrow, Alaska, which has 10 daily flights for its population of 5000 people. Conversely, over 900 flights depart from Paris each day (pop. 13 million as well).

Atlanta averages more than 13 departures in a quarter of an hour.