Macao has added another superlative to its name: as well as the world’s gambling capital, it is now the most densely populated place on the planet.
The finding was made by fast-growing Vancouver infographic specialists Visual Capitalist, who ranked the SAR in the top spot with 23,167 people per square kilometre.
In terms of population density, that puts Macao higher than Monaco (16,024), Singapore (8,576) and Hong Kong (normally thought of as a place of extreme population density, but in fact averaging just 6,809 people per square kilometre).
[See more: Workplace policies could ease Macao’s birth rate woes, experts say]
Besides the SARs, no other Chinese territory made it into the top 10.
Macao’s high ranking comes from the fact that its people are crammed into an official area of 33.3 square kilometres, which, for comparison, is 22 times smaller than Singapore (734.3 square kilometres) or roughly 33.5 times smaller than Hong Kong (1,114.57 square kilometres).
The city’s land shortage is so severe that the local government is hoping to shift a sizable proportion of the population to the Zhuhai-administered island of Hengqin by 2035.
