Sydney is more densely populated than Chicago, Seattle and Los Angeles but recent comparisons have painted the opposite picture by measuring Sydney the wrong way.

Australia is one of the most sparsely populated places on the planet if it is simply divided evenly by land area to give about three people each a square kilometre. But the reality is that residents of Potts Point, Ultimo and Chippendale shared the land around them with more than 15,000 people per square kilometre in 2016.

Dr Michael Grosvenor, an urban planning expert at the University of Southern Queensland, said he is sick of bad data being used to compare cities.

"If I see another global city comparison showing LA and Phoenix as being more population dense than European or Australian cities I’ll scream," Dr Grosvenor said. "This type of statistical reporting has been going on for years [but] the Sydney region boundaries include national parks and large tracts of open space, whereas North American cities do not.