[cortesoft]

A long time. Even the populated areas could be a lot more dense, and we wouldn't have people pushing each other into the oceans.

Hong Kong has a density of 6,620 people per square km. If the US was that dense, we could fit the entire population (317 million) in about 48,000 square km (the US has close to 10 million square km)

Of course, we probably couldn't have that many people living in that dense an area. But we do have a long way to go before we are pushing each other into the ocean.

[culturestate]

Hong Kong's population density is actually even more impressive than that when you consider that large swaths of the land are either mountains or protected areas that developers are unable to build on. Many areas in the city are an order or magnitude or more higher - Mong Kok, for instance, has a population density up around 130,000 people per km/sq.

[adventured]

Just for reference purposes:

http://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_popula...