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There's a useful corrective here to the lie that Gaza is the most crowded place on Earth: The UK politician George Galloway wrote in The Glasgow Record last month that the Gaza Strip is "the most densely populated piece of earth on the planet." Galloway wrote that 1.5 million Palestinians live there.
Daoud Kuttab, a Palestinian journalist currently teaching at Princeton, wrote March 26 that Gaza is "one of the most densely populated places on earth, with 3,823 people per square kilometre." Kuttab's figure is in line with recent Gaza population estimates of 1.4 million.
If Galloway's estimate of 1.5 million Gaza population is correct, this is almost 4,200 people per square kilometer. The Central Intelligence Agency projects that the Gaza population will reach 1,537,269 in July. This would bring the density to 4,270 people per square kilometer. But this isn't even as crowded as Tel Aviv. Gaza had plenty of problems. But they are nothing - nothing - to do with population density:
Both Singapore and Hong Kong have more than 6,000 people per square kilometer. Tel Aviv has more than 7,000 people per square kilometer. If you count the suburbs of Tel Aviv, the metropolitan area with its population of 2.3 million has a density of more than 5,000 people per square kilometer, which is considerably more crowded than the Gaza Strip as reckoned by Galloway or Kuttab or the CIA.
Selected estimates of population density:
Mumbai
27,209 people/sq km
http://www.mcgm.gov.in/
Kolkata
24,000 people/sq km
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kolkata
Tel Aviv
7,445 people/sq km
(385,000 people, 51.8 sq km)
Hong Kong
6,352 people/sq km
http://www.gov.hk/en/about/abouthk/factsheets/docs/population.pdf
Singapore
6,252 people/sq km
http://www.singstat.gov.sg/stats/keyind.html
London
5,100 people/sq km
Tel Aviv metro area including suburbs
5,050 people/sq km
(2.3 million people, 453 sq km)
Moscow
4,900 people/sq km
Tokyo/Yokahama
4,750 people/sq km
Warsaw
4,300 people/sq km
Gaza Strip per CIA projection
4,270 people/sq km
(1,537,269 population July 2008, 360 sq km)
Gaza Strip per George Galloway
4,167 people/sq km
(1.5 million people, 360 sq km)
Gaza Strip per Daoud Kuttab
3,822 people/sq km
The numbers for London, Tel Aviv metro area, Moscow, Tokyo/Yokohama and Warsaw are from the City Mayors site.
http://www.citymayors.com/statistics/largest-cities-density-125.html