With more than 23 million people, Shanghai is the world’s biggest city, and those of us who have been here for a bit know that it has grown quickly in recent years. Now you can watch the city’s growth from 1984 to 2014 in just a few seconds, thanks to the clever folks at Google.
It takes a minute to load, but this time-elapsed image of Shanghai is worth the wait
While there are bigger “metro areas” in the world, Shanghai is still the world’s largest proper city, and with the growth shown in this time-lapse image, courtesy of Google Earth and BusinessInsider, you can see that it is not about to give up its crown anytime soon.
From just 2008 to 2010, the eastern China city gained another two million people, and population density is currently 41,958 per square kilometre (16,200 people per square mile) — compared with a little over 4,000 people per square mile in New York City.
And more Shanghainese appear to be on the way. As China’s cabinet took a major step last week in the government’s move to urbanise its population by approving a plan to grant official residence in the country’s major cities for 100 million people.
For those of you with an interest in more time lapse shots, our friends at BusinessInsider.com have similar images of the Chinese cities of Shaoxing, Taizhou, Xiamen, Ordos, Nanyang, Nanjing, Linyi, Jiangmen, Haikou, Fuyang, Chongqing and Changsha available here.
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