Is the world full or empty?

  ^{En Español}  

Is the world too dense with people, or does it feel like there's plenty of room for all 8 billion of us? Well, the answer to that question hinges on where you happen to be looking. For city dwellers, it may seem like the world is packed full with people, but human population is unevenly distributed across the face of the planet. While some localities have more than 100,000 people per square mile, vast stretches of Earth's surface are nearly devoid of people.

The reasons for this dichotomy are manifold. Starting with the most obvious, huge swaths of the planet simply don't foster the conditions that allow human settlement on a large scale to be comfortable, or even feasible. These places may be too cold or too hot, too dry or too wet.

Even in those zones where people have been able to establish extensive societies, living patterns are becoming more and more polarized. Consider that, in 1800, less than 10% of the world's population lived in urban areas. It took just over two centuries from that point for the rural/urban divide to reach equilibrium, and now the balance is rapidly sliding in favor of cities, where most economic opportunity is consolidated in our increasingly post-agrarian civilization. By 2050, the United Nations projects that over two thirds of the people on Earth will reside in urban areas.

Scroll through the maps and images below to explore some of the most crowded and also some of the least populated corners of our planet.

For more in-depth reading on human population patterns and their impact on the planet we inhabit, dive into the Living in the Age of Humans series: