Urban Area Map Showcase
 

This is a project I have been working on for some time now, in an attempt to provide a comprehensive collection for the comparison of the worlds major centers' urban spread. Please be aware that each of these takes a significant amount of time to make. The idea was inspired by Shiro's old maps. Please use any of the maps for yourself, but do give credit where due. If you would like to see your city, please let me know.

Note: Every map in this thread is at exactly the same scale (within 0.05 km altitude). They are designed to show the the extent of the urban spread of an area, not variations in density. Anyone looking to compare density of areas should look elsewhere. Also, every yellow map is to scale with every other yellow map.

Note: The vast majority of maps are places I have not visited, so the accuracy of the maps are based on what I can see in adequate detail in Google Earth, or have prior knowledge of. I welcome advice on updating accuracy, but pm me if you must. Also, if you'd like to post any maps you've made yourself, please provide links rather than posting the image itself.

Note: Please keep comments civil and flame-free.

Cities so Far: Anchorage, Athens, Atlanta, Auckland, Baghdad, Belfast, Birmingham, Brasília, Brisbane-Gold Coast, Budapest, Buenos Aires, Buffalo, Cairns, Calgary, Cape Town, Caracas, Casablanca, Charlotte, Chicago, Christchurch, Copenhagen-Malmö, Dallas-Fort Worth, Denver, Detroit, Dublin, Durban, Edmonton, Golden Horseshoe, Hamburg, Havana, Houston, Indianapolis, Istanbul, Kansas City, Karachi, Kinshasa-Brazzaville, Kuwait, La Paz, Las Vegas, Lausanne-Geneva, London, Los Angeles, Madrid, Manchester-Liverpool, Manila, Melbourne, Mexicali, Miami, Milwaukee, Minneapolis-Saint Paul, Monterrey, Montreal, Mumbai, New Orleans, Oslo, Ottawa, Paris, Pearl River Delta, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Port-au-Prince, Portland (OR), Quebec City, Quito, Raleigh/Winston-Salem, Randstad, Rhine-Ruhr, Riyadh, Rochester, Rome, Sacramento, Santiago, Santo Domingo, San Antonio, San Diego-Tijuana, San Francisco Bay Area, São Paulo, St. Louis, Sydney, Tallinn, Townsville, Tulsa, Tunis, Vancouver, Washington-Baltimore, Wellington, Winnipeg, Zurich

To start us off, two wonderful cities from the United States:

Pittsburgh, PA
City Population: 305,704
Metro Population: 2,447,393
http://i.imgur.com/aYOLO.jpg

Las Vegas, NV
Updated! Now much more accurate - 08/02/2012
City Population: 583,756
Metro Population: 1,951,269
http://i.imgur.com/59FOo.jpg

Many more to come

Cool, bring 'em on!

Next up, a French juggernaut and a multicultural African paradise:

Paris, France
City Population: 2,211,297
Metro Population: 11,899,544
Image updated - now oriented north, entire map overhauled to be more detailed and accurate
http://i.imgur.com/0E0EL.jpg

Cape Town, South Africa
Metro Population: 3,497,097
http://i.imgur.com/kVsIw.jpg

Hmmm, these are interesting, how did you get them all to the same scale? Id like to do a few. Its so sad that a city in the US can have a metro population of not even 2 million, yet cover nearly the same area as a city in Europe with a metro population of nearly 12 million. Could you imagine of Paris had the same density as Las Vegas, it would cover a good portion of northern France for crying out loud.

Awesome! Please keep these coming!

Do you have any Canadian cities planned? This is a very cool idea, thanks.

Just using a few of Google Earths measuring features to ensure 100% accuracy.

See below!
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Next up, a booming Canadian metropolis, and a city dubbed "The City of Sails"

Calgary, AB
City Population: 988,193
Metro Population: 1,230,248
http://i.imgur.com/dwsJX.jpg

Auckland, New Zealand
City Population: 1,354,900
Metro Population: 1,462,000
http://i.imgur.com/Sxd1u.jpg

To be very clear, at least for the American cities, these maps show urban/built-out area boundaries, but the maker has include the population of the entire metropolitan area on the maps, I guess because recent data for urban area populations haven't yet been released by the Census. Las Vegas' urban area is actually one of the more dense urban areas in the country, in fact. I think it was the tenth most dense in the country in 2000. It's actually hemmed in pretty tightly by both mountains and land owned by the federal Bureau of Land Management.

With regard to any population figures - they are only from Wikipedia, so I am happy to change/update any figure with more recent or accurate sources.
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Up next, a wonderful sprawling Texan urban mass, and the first of many cities that required stitching due to it's immense size

Houston, TX
City Population: 2,099,451
Metro Population: 5,946,800
http://i.imgur.com/iJDTp.jpg

Next, a modern Latin American metropolis, and the home of the Indy 500

Santiago de Chile
Metro Population: 7,200,000
http://i.imgur.com/BSye3.jpg

Indianapolis, IN
City Population: 829,718
Metro Population: 1,756,241
http://i.imgur.com/ALIXj.jpg

The Sacramento region has new imagery from 6/2011, nudge nudge. ;)

Roger that, stay tuned :tup:
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Up next, one of the highest major cities on Earth, and the self-proclaimed sports capital of the world

Quito, Ecuador
City Population: 2,697,698
Metro Population: 3,342,201
http://i.imgur.com/AtvXE.jpg

Melbourne, Australia
Metro Population: 4,077,036
http://i.imgur.com/pO2ji.jpg

Cool maps!

calgary is hardly the sprawlgary that its made up to be now is it.

Next up, an old railway hub, and a city recently the victim of a catastrophic disaster

Buffalo, NY
City Population: 261,310
Metro Population (includes Niagara): 1,300,000
http://i.imgur.com/MELyE.jpg

Port-au-Prince, Haiti
City Population: 704,776 (before earthquake)
Metro Population: 1,728,100 (before earthquake?)
http://i.imgur.com/8X16v.jpg

Your map of Buffalo includes a couple Canadian cities, which, naturally, aren't a part of its metro area. Alternatively, you could just raise the cross-border urban area population to 1.3 million.

Otherwise, great maps!

Sweet, makes sense, done.

i hope you don't mind an unsolicited contribution :D ... i think i got the scale right - but it's a little unclear what the logic is behind the coloring. i'm assuming developed areas, no farmland, no rural areas, no parkland, etc.

San Francisco Bay Area
City Populations
San Francisco 815,000
Oakland 409,000
San Jose 965,000
CSA Population (the entire CSA is not on the map) 7,468,000

it's tough to tell developed from not in some of the more wooded suburban areas - especially in the hills. link to map : http://www.431.org/misc/sfBayAreaj.jpg

All of these maps are very cool.