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by cmrdporcupine 1098 days ago
You just compared apples to oranges.

~6.954 (as of 2016 so actually higher) million of those 15m people live in 8,244 km^2 in the Greater Toronto Hamilton area, which works out to 843 people per square kilometer (vs 3368 for Istanbul).

Yes, 1/4 the density, yes, but nowhere close to the bizarre comparison you gave, where you used literally uninhabitable/barely-settled areas of the province (Ontario is huge and mostly rock and lakes) and compared to one of the densest cities in the world. At least compare urban area to urban area.

Toronto is the 3rd or 4th most populated city in North America, depending on how you count. Not some quaint arctic getaway. Also sits at the same latitude as e.g. Marseille in the south of France, or Florence in Italy. So not exactly northern at all.

Also if we restrict to just the actual technical city of Toronto proper, the density is higher than what you gave for Istanbul: 2,794,356 people in 630.20km^2 == 4435 people per square kilometer.

So... Check your biases at the door.
1 comments
semihsalihoglu 1098 days ago
I might be wrong in the numbers as I just got them from Wikipedia. But to be clear: Istanbul is the name of both the city and the "province" in Turkiye. And I used the larger area number from Wikipedia, which is for the province: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Istanbul

So even when using official numbers, the urban density of Istnabul is > 6000 according to Wikipedia.

ps: I live in Toronto, so I know Toronto is incomparably dense compared to other parts of Ontario. I could have made the same point by comparing Toronto's density to Ontario. Though, I'm curious how much of Ontario is uninhabitable. I thought most of it (say > 50%) seemed habitable.

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cmrdporcupine 1098 days ago
The right comparison would be with the area and population of southern & maybe eastern Ontario and use that. Northern Ontario is really just something else. Anything north of the line where the Canadian shield begins becomes basically unarable and extremely low population density. And once you get past e.g. Timmins, there's really ... "nothing." (Pretty though.)

I don't have the patience to go look this up, but obv it will clearly be below Istanbul, but likely about equivalent with most of the US atlantic region and maybe even parts of the UK etc.

Istanbul/Constantinople, ... a heavily populated city for like 2000 years, not to mention the region going back to the, uh, paleolithic and it's literally basically the origin of ... farming and settled agriculture. Kinda weird comparison.

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haldujai 1098 days ago
> maybe eastern Ontario

What do you mean by "maybe"? Eastern Ontario contains the 4th largest metropolitan area in Canada (Ottawa) which is a very reasonable comparator, the density is 195/km.

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cmrdporcupine 1098 days ago
IT's just there are large parts of what is classified as "eastern Ontario" that is kinda similar to the near-north ; not arable, shield & cottage country, and sparsely populated. So it doesn't feel fair. But yes, Ottawa clearly a major centre.
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