chuui

LA Megacity versus the Netherlands

Thursday 11 July 2024

The Netherlands (NL) and Los Angeles Megacity have both about 18 million people. Density is hard to compare. LA Megacity and combined statistical area is too low because of mountains and deserts where nobody lives. Greater Los Angeles might be high because it might be only urban. Still, I’m guessing LA population density might be higher than both the Netherlands as a whole and only urban Randstad. As for GDP, LA beats NL with 25% higher GDP. That’s not an insubstantial difference is it?

It gets a bit more embarrassing for NL when one makes a comparison between simply Greater LA (population 12,872,322) and the Randstad of the Netherlands. To account for the difference in population I’ll take the GDP per capita, 82,941 versus 63,053. Greater LA beats the Randstad with 31% more GDP per capita.

I might be missing something here, I’m not a numbers person. I noticed that NL and LA Megacity were comparable population wise, so I got curious. Maybe they’re incomparable for some reason?

LA Megacity and combined statistical area

  1. 87,940 km2 (33,954 sq mi)
  2. Population, 18,422,600
  3. Density 208.9/km2 (541.1/sq mi)
  4. GDP $1.528 trillion

Greater Los Angeles

  1. 12,562 km2 (4,850.3 sq mi)
  2. Population, 12,872,322
  3. Density 1,025/km2 (2,654/sq mi)
  4. GDP $1.227 trillion

NL

  1. 41,865km2 (16,164 sq mi)
  2. Population 18,127,400 (68th)
  3. Density 520/km2 (1,346.8/sq mi) (33rd)
  4. GDP $1.329 trillion

Randstad

  1. 11,372.15 km2 (4,390.81 sq mi)
  2. Population 8,403,915
  3. Density 738.99/km2 (1,914.0/sq mi)
  4. GDP €510.181 billion

Update: I tried to find additional data to supplement GDP, comparative date on things like health, happiness, stuff like that. But those things are hard to measure. Also, mostly country level, not state level. It’s always been my subjective personal impression that the US is a great place to live if you have plenty of money, and a rather depressing place to live if you are relatively poor.

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