The Off Topic Topic

[celedhring]

Barcelona is 1.6m in the city proper. The metro area is something like 3-3.5m. Again, rather small compared to other European capitals.

Population growth has incidentally been voluntarily stunted since the 1980s, with a ban on high-rise residential buildings.

[Admiral Yi]

I would think people would have to be jammed into high rises to get that kind of number, but I've not seen many high rises in any pictures of Barcelona.

[Liep]

I would think people would have to be jammed into high rises to get that kind of number, but I've not seen many high rises in any pictures of Barcelona.

Narrow streets, small apartments, big families. Besides, I don't think there's any cities in EU with many residential high rises close together.

[The Larch]

Spain is quite fond of, at the very least, medium rises, if not high ones (is there a definition?). The common ones in the area I grew up in were around 6-8 stories high.

[celedhring]

I would think people would have to be jammed into high rises to get that kind of number, but I've not seen many high rises in any pictures of Barcelona.

Narrow streets, small apartments, big families. Besides, I don't think there's any cities in EU with many residential high rises close together.

Yeah, the Barcelona city grid is extremely efficient on that regard. Ironically, it was designed with a low-density town in mind, but it became very good at packing a lot of apartments while providing traffic capillarity.

Also, families in Spain tend to live together far longer than in other countries, for cultural and economic reasons. So you'll have 4+ people living in the same flat pretty often.

[The Larch]

It's very telling when you look at population densities of other large European cities. Paris also has plenty of very high density population, but nowhere else in France you reach those levels. Many other Spanish cities also have some rather high density areas, there's barely a single medium-large city that doesn't have at least some moderately high population density areas. London is super low density, German cities are relatively low end of the density spectrum as well as Rome, for instance.

[Tamas]

London is super low density,

Which is quite an achievement because it does feel like living crammed together like sardines.

[The Larch]

London is super low density,

Which is quite an achievement because it does feel like living crammed together like sardines.

It might feel like that in the center, or in roads and streets, there are millions of people living there after all. Where it's not felt is in population density, given the huge area of London. All those single family houses with tiny gardens have to fit somewhere. 

[Duque de Bragança]

Just read that the most densely populated square km in the EU is in Barcelona.

Yes.
Spanish people live some of the most densely populated lives in the world.

http://theconversation.com/think-your-country-is-crowded-these-maps-reveal-the-truth-about-population-density-across-europe-90345

Ugh. Must be hell.

I always found Barcelona to be quite livable compared to other capitals though. I suspect that since the overall population of the metro area is smaller compared to, say, London, Paris, Rome, Madrid, etc... the actual density of people walking the streets of town on a daily basis is smaller.

Touristy areas are pure hell though.

Paris centre is indeed very densely populated as pointed out by the Larch. There is no formal metro area, with precise limits. Île-de-France is the administrative region, not the vaguely defined Greater Paris.

[Tonitrus]

The thing that amazed our spanish exchange student the most is just how much space we have here in Canada.

True but that even amazes Americans.

In the reverse, it definitely feels cramped over here.  Almost feel a bit like Gulliver.

[Tamas]

London is super low density,

Which is quite an achievement because it does feel like living crammed together like sardines.

It might feel like that in the center, or in roads and streets, there are millions of people living there after all. Where it's not felt is in population density, given the huge area of London. All those single family houses with tiny gardens have to fit somewhere. 

Still they manage to have joint, thin walls to make sure it feels like living on top of each other.

[The Larch]

London is super low density,

Which is quite an achievement because it does feel like living crammed together like sardines.

It might feel like that in the center, or in roads and streets, there are millions of people living there after all. Where it's not felt is in population density, given the huge area of London. All those single family houses with tiny gardens have to fit somewhere. 

Still they manage to have joint, thin walls to make sure it feels like living on top of each other.

And yet they put carpeting in the bathroom. Brits have different priorities.

[garbon]

London is super low density,

Which is quite an achievement because it does feel like living crammed together like sardines.

It might feel like that in the center, or in roads and streets, there are millions of people living there after all. Where it's not felt is in population density, given the huge area of London. All those single family houses with tiny gardens have to fit somewhere. 

Still they manage to have joint, thin walls to make sure it feels like living on top of each other.

I suppose you get what you pay for. I'm pretty close to the centre (zone 1) and I can barely hear any noise at all from my neighbors.

[Tamas]

the reason I have bought that up was that when I googled what I could do with our noise problems earlier, it seemed like a fairly regular problem.

BTW are you top floor by any chance?

[Threviel]

Since when is Barcelona a capital?