Across space (cont.)

"The total process of collecting, compiling, analysing, and publishing or otherwise disseminating demographic, economic and social data pertaining to all persons in a country or in a well-delineated part of a country at a specified time."

Population Density

Another basic measure for analysing urban development, and also the relationship between population and environment, is the population density. This is usually calculated as the number of people per square kilometre, or per square mile.

Population density is useful to get an idea about the spatial distribution across the territories of countries or regions. Populous regions are not necessarily densely inhabited overall as population numbers may be clustered in certain areas.

This can be seen in the example of Australia, as discussed on the previous page. Population density for the entire country is very low, at 2.9 people per km2 in 2010 (UN Population Division 2011).

However this does not give us the full picture. With 89% of the population living in urban areas (World Bank 2013), we would expect the pattern of population density to be uneven across the country. If we look at the major cities we can see that this is true. The Greater Melbourne area has a population density of 430 people per km2 while Greater Sydney has a population density of 380 people per km2 (Australia Bureau of Statistics 2013). A huge difference from the country average of 2.9 people per km2!