Better start building housing, Los Angeles, because it's about to get dense(r) around here, say some new numbers out from Bloomberg (via Gizmodo), which predict that the greater LA area will be the densest urban area in the US in 2025 with an estimated 6,450 people per square mile and a projected total population of nearly 15.7 million (the population per square mile was 4,662 in 1995); Bloomberg predicts the LA area population to grow by 38.4 percent by then. The US Census bureau already found in 2012 that the entire Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim area is the most densely populated "urbanized area" in the U.S. with nearly 7,000 people per square mile; Bloomberg appears to have used a definition of the metro area that covers roughly half that land (about 2,400 square miles).



[The U.S. doesn't make the list until LA at number 27 (the list only covers wealthy big cities); image via Bloomberg]

· Most Crowded in 2025: Global Cities [Bloomberg]

· Los Angeles is the Most Densely Populated Urban Area in the US [Curbed LA]

· Why Sprawling LA Could Be Denser Than NYC in a Decade [Gizmodo]