I read the other day that Taiwan’s population density ( 2002 ) was 618 persons per square km, the second highest in the world after Bangladesh !
that’ll be why i live in an apartment then!
Taipei 9730 persons per square km
Kaohsiung 9721 persons per square km
Taichung, everybody is too busy running the red lights to be counted!
[quote=“jeffoasis”]I read the other day that Taiwan’s population density ( 2002 ) was 618 persons per square km[/quote]Was this including the 70% or so of the land area that’s too steep to live on?
don’t know, it didn’t say, but i would presume so :help:
Apparently Yong He is the most densely populated “city” - subhurb would be a better description - in Taiwan: 280,000 ppl in 7 square kms = 40,000 per sq.km!! I was fortunate enough to live in a stunning (and cheap) apartment overlooking the park number 4, before 2/3 of it was bull-dozed to build a library. The park was the only thing that made the city livable, and was why I moved to the area in the first place.
I thought banciao was the most crowded place?
And yet we get stories in the news about how awful the falling birthrate is. 
That’s because its scews the population so that there are more unproductive old folk and fewer productive young folk.
This site, which I’ve always liked, puts it at 632.
geohive.com/charts/charts.php?xm … op_density
Note, it’s for countries over 5000sqKM, excluding small city-states.
If you include the littlies, Macao is much more crowded at 17000 per sqKM, and Singapore and Hong Kong are ten times as crowded as Taiwan.
Singapore really? It totally doesn’t seem even close to beign as crowded as HK…not even as crowded as Taipei…weird
I’ve posted this before somewhere, but I found this one the most appropriate one IMO - it looks at major urbanised areas in terms of the population living within them over the square km covered, so it’s more accurate than including sparsely inhabited areas like mountains, etc.
demographia.com/db-worldua.pdf
It gives the ‘urban area’ of Taipei as having a density of 23,000 people/sq km, which ranks only behind several areas of Hong Kong, Cairo and Ho Chi Minh City. Be warned, for the sensitive - it’s listed under “China”.
whilst I know that a hell of a lot of taiwan is to steep to live on, it seems to me that there is a hell of a lot of space around the people just don’t want to live on because it’s more than 5mins away from the nearest Carrefour and/or 7-11…
Just drive down the highway from Taipei to Taichung and further down the island… even on the jam packed Western costal plain, there’s huge tracts of land that are more than livable… but the Taiwanese like their jam packed, crowded lifestyles… they justify it under the wierd notions of “convenience” and “re nao” (熱鬧)…
[quote=“daasgrrl”]I’ve posted this before somewhere, but I found this one the most appropriate one IMO -
demographia.com/db-worldua.pdf[/quote]
Great document daasgrrl. Very interesting.
Having recently lived in Los Angeles, I was surpised to find it more densley populated than cities like San Francisco, Cologne, Brussels, Chicago and New York. Would not have guessed that – LA always seemed so spread out…
That’s because its scews the population so that there are more unproductive old folk and fewer productive young folk.[/quote]
Welcome to the path of development from an agrarian to industrial society, just like dozens of countries went through before Taiwan. What’s the alternative? Keep having more babies to keep inline with traditional concepts of what a family should be based on confucian and farming values, pushing the population up even more and further ruining the environment?
Four words: Senior citizen death camps.
Four words: Senior citizen death camps.[/quote]
Two words: Soylent Green
Had to google that one.
Thank you for the educational, if somewhat disturbing, mental image, What Bird. 
That’s because its scews the population so that there are more unproductive old folk and fewer productive young folk.[/quote]
Welcome to the path of development from an agrarian to industrial society, just like dozens of countries went through before Taiwan. What’s the alternative? Keep having more babies to keep inline with traditional concepts of what a family should be based on confucian and farming values, pushing the population up even more and further ruining the environment?[/quote]
:bravo: well said Paogao… couldn’t agree more…
:bravo: …
Four words: Senior citizen death camps.[/quote]
Two words: Soylent Green[/quote]
One word: Immigration
The native population in the U.S. and Canada have declining birthrates, too. But the population is expanding. It’s too bad that places like Taiwan and Japan are too xenophobic to put two and two together - their anti-immigration policies are going to cause their societies to implode. Lots of places in developed Europe, too.
The worry over declining birthrate / population is just another sign of the direct conflict between economics and survival. If the Earth had fewer people it might last a bit longer, but us humans have created this artificial and ridiculous notion of infinite growth. If our population and economy ever attempts to stop growing and just level out it will collapse :loco:
On another note, cities in Taiwan make so much more sense than they do in North America. Even in the middle of Taipei it is easy and quick to get out into some nice mountains and countryside. Good thing they have not developed the walmart lovin urban sprawlin suv drivin culture (yet??)