Size, population and density

Sweden is as most of us know a very big country with relatively few people. Hong Kong is, also as most of us know, a very small region with relatively many people. Actually Sweden has a population density of 20 people per square kilometer while Hong Kong has a population density of over 6000 people per square kilometer. But this doesn't really tell us very much, especially since the population in Sweden is extremely wide spread, as example the province Skåne in the south has 5 times the average, 100 people per square kilometer, and Lapland in the north has only .9 people per square kilometer.

So to make this simple we just compare:
Hong Kong has almost exactly 7 million inhabitants and Sweden has a bit more than 9 million, this is in approximation the same (10 to the power of 10), so a direct size comparison feels rather fair so: you can put over 400 Hong Kong into 1 Sweden. You can put as many as 10 Hong Kong in Skåne alone, or 100 Hong Kong in Lapland. Skåne which has one of the most populated regions in Sweden has only one million people, 10 times less than Hong Kong, which shows why the density in Hong Kong is nearly 100 times higher than in Skåne, Lapland only has a 10th of that, about a hundred thousand people.

Keep in mind though that large part of Hong Kong is uninhabitable mountains or very sparsely populated like the island and the regions in New Territories.

I think a more interesting comparison is Tin Shui Wai, where I live now, versus Bjärred, where I grew up. Tin Shui Wai is a small residential town which has been newly developed on reclaimed land (constructed land built upon water or in this case a wetland or swamp area), Bjärred is a small residential town near the University town of Lund and the third largest city in Sweden, Malmö. Interestingly Tin Shui Wai and Bjärred are nearly exactly the same size, 430Ha and 439Ha respectively, Tin Shui Wai is, however, approximately 30 times higher than Bjärred. This is quite funny because every residential building in Tin Shui Wai has between 30 and 50 floors, while the houses in Bjärred has between one and four floors, and Tin Shui Wai has around 30 times as large population as Bjärred, 270 000 (which is rather close to the population of Malmö) and 8000 respectively.

I write this because I want people to get a grasp of how insanely (in our sparsely populated point of view) densely populated this region is. Maybe you think you know the numbers and say: well what about the other Chinese cities; Beijing has a larger population than Hong Kong and Shanghai even more. But Beijing and Shanghai are huge regions, Shanghai about 6 times as large as Hong Kong and Beijing twice of that, and both those regions are pretty much flat with buildings everywhere.

All numbers come from www.wikipedia.org and are not 100% reliable, but for these curiosa I trust them.