Changing Topographies of Population Densities in the Philippines

What if we can see population centres as mountains, and places with less people as plains? Compared to my previous post, the population densities are depicted using shaded line graphs. Which cities are densifying? Which places are decreasing in density? Why? How are settlements in the Philippines changing over time? Time for map gif!

And please tell me if you want to make the gif slower! :)

Here is a closer look at the cities and their population densities in the year 2000.

Luzon (year 2000)

Visayas (year 2000)

Mindanao (year 2000)

We’re a nation of islands; of cities scattered and sprawling across islands; and of islands within our cities.

These maps perhaps fit into one of the major moments of urbanisation: “concentrating” urbanisation. The other two are “extending” and “differentiating”. Those ideas are by Dr. Neil Brenner and everyone else in the Urban Theory Lab of Harvard GSD.

I’ll cover those important concepts in another post, because seeing urbanisation in a “spiky way” is only one of many ways of analysing this important phase in history.

Again, I made the maps using data from Columbia University. The original idea was by Dr. James Cheshire of University College London (UCL). Ryan Brideau took it further by improving the computation time here. TJ Palanca also has a cool take on the data in his site.

(originally posted in my old Medium publication, Spatialist, in 2017)