Atlanta’s population density versus global cities—in maps!

Atlanta is known as many things, but dense urban landscape it is not.

Want proof? A new series of maps by SpareFoot illustrates how Atlanta stacks up against cities across the United States and around the world in terms of population density, a gauge of the number of people who live in any given area.

While it’s no surprise that the 460,000 Atlanta residents spread across 133 square miles doesn’t quite yield the population density of famously urban places like New York or Paris, the comparison to cities we often liken ourselves to—car-centric hubs like Los Angeles and Houston—is somewhat surprising.

Of course, there’s a lot more to the story than the maps let on.

In Atlanta, there are distinct pockets of high population density clustered along the Peachtree corridor in Midtown and Buckhead, while suburban-style single-family homes and even large swaths of undeveloped land within the city limits skew the numbers.

Still, the maps show that while Atlanta is quickly gaining population, the city still has a lot of growth potential.

That is, unless we’re aiming to be the next Anchorage...

• Visualizing Atlanta’s Population Density [SpareFoot]