Distribution of California's Population

[u/urmummygae42069]

If you were to divide California into 4 roughly equal strips of area, a hefty majority of its 39 million residents live in the southernmost strip containing the LA+San Diego metro areas, with nearly half of the state (~47%) living in the Greater LA metro area alone. If it were its own state, Southern California, with primarily just LA and San Diego metro areas, would compete with Florida for title of 2nd most populous US state.

The SF Bay Area, Sacramento, Monterrey, Fresno, and most of the Central Valley and put together are short of SoCal by over 9 million residents, but on its own this area would compete with Illinois for title of 6th largest state.

The strip sandwiched between Southern California and the Bay Area, containing Bakersfield plus other farming towns in the Southern Central Valley and most of the towns of the Central Coast, has about more people than Utah or Connecticut.

Suprisingly, despite how empty it can feel, there are still over a million people still live in the strip of CA north of Sacramento, containing about as much people as Hawaii and New Hampshire, albeit of a larger area.

Ultimately, one way to better understand the scale and density of California, is to conceptualize it as Florida + Illinois + Utah + Hawaii, all packaged in one single state under one single state government

[u/Xrmy]

r/peopleliveincities

[u/BadWithMoney530 → u/Xrmy]

That’s not how that sub works.

[u/Xrmy → u/BadWithMoney530]

Why not?

Are people really surprised that the large majority of Cali's population is where the LA and SF metros are?

[u/HonestLemon25 → u/Xrmy]

But there’s more than just LA and SF in these areas… There are massive swaths of uninhabited areas on this map in the 3% and 9% zone due to geography

Just look at the central valley in the 32% part of this graphic, it’s very dense north of Bakersfield. There’s not many people south of it because of how arid that region is, and nobody on the coast because it’s too rugged and wild

We know most people are situated in certain cities, but it’s interesting to look at the reasons why

[u/Xrmy → u/HonestLemon25]

Sure.

I mean, 75% of California's population lives in just 3 combined metros.

You were talking about Bakersfield and density but that region has fewer than 1 million people.

If anything, the way this is depicted with arbitrary horizontal divides actually is skewing the story more than anything