[deklerk]

> For example Los Angeles County, twice as large as Finland.

Uhh. You're off by two orders of magnitude. Los Angeles county is 4751 sq mi [1]. Finland is 130,666 sq mi [2].

1: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Los_Angeles_County,_Californ...

2: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finland

[et2o]

He or she meant by population I would assume. Approximately 5 vs. 10 million.

[slededit]

Population isn't very relevant when we're speaking specifically of things that relate to land area like topological maps.

[phamilton]

But we aren't speaking of land area, we're speaking of buildings, which relate to population. I'd wager that LA County has more buildings than Finland.

[objectivetruth]

But we are talking about building footprints which DO directly correlate to population, not overall area of an entity. So it's the most relevant factor.

[walterstucco]

Not really

Arizona and Croatia have the same population, but look at the aerial maps...

[bbeonx]

Right. If one interpretation is wildly wrong and there is another blindingly obvious interpretation that is correct and relevant... Why would we ever give someone the benefit of the doubt?

[TheSpiceIsLife]

Or refer to the community guideline:

Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith.

Which can be found here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

[adventist]

Exactly. I would assume that the higher the population, the more buildings present. Just because you have a lot of land doesn't mean you have a lot of buildings.

[walterstucco]

Most of the building are not residential