Actual Scale
See how big any city would be if it held the same number of people somewhere else on the map.
What it does
Search for any city, town, urban area, state, county or country and its outline is drawn on the map. Drag the outline anywhere in the world. As it moves, it grows or shrinks so that the area it covers always holds the same number of people as the place itself: small over a dense city, huge over empty land.
A Manhattan-sized outline dropped on rural Iowa balloons across the state. Dropped on Lagos or Dhaka it collapses. It turns population density from a number into something you can see and feel, and it makes city size comparisons honest: not "which city covers more land" but "how much land would it take to hold this many people here".
Things to try
- Drop Tokyo on the United States and see how far it spreads at American densities.
- Compare New York City with Los Angeles, Houston or Phoenix by dragging one over the other.
- Move a whole country, such as the Netherlands or Bangladesh, across Canada or Australia.
- Turn on the population heatmap to see why the outline changes size as it crosses cities, suburbs and countryside.
How it works
The map sums a global population grid under the outline while you drag, entirely in your browser, and rescales the shape until the count under it matches the population of the place at home. Nothing is precomputed per city, so any place and any location on Earth work.
The data
- Population: the Global Human Settlement Layer population grid GHS-POP for 2025, 100 m resolution, by the European Commission Joint Research Centre (CC BY 4.0).
- Places and boundaries: cities, towns, administrative areas and countries from OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL).
- Urban areas: the US Census Bureau 2020 urban areas and the GHS Urban Centre Database.
- Basemap: OpenFreeMap with OpenMapTiles.
Populations are model estimates from satellite and census data, so counts for a single small place can differ from official figures. The comparisons hold up well; the last digits do not.
Tips
- Right-click an outline (long-press on a phone) to remove it.
- Press m to open the settings, where the heatmap options and this page live.