London seems a pretty crowded place these days, blaming tourists, immigrants, students, and commuters, but really it’s London’s fault for being an attractive place to live and work.

So for the purposes of this post with the help of Alasdair Rae, we look at population density.

Rae founder of Automatic Knowledge Ltd used this metric:

He took the population data for 18,000 output areas from the 2021 Census (this can only give an approximation as many in London are ‘off grid’, and don’t show up on the Census).

Overlaid the United Kingdom with 1km x 1km squares.

Assigned population figures to each grid square.

This gave him the population density, with only three squares exceeding 20,000, all were in central London: Lisson Grove, Upton Park and Bow.

Obviously, the results could be skewed depending on the grid’s positioning.

Successively moving the orientation the clear winner (if that is the correct term) was Bow Common close to Tower Hamlets Cemetery Park with a maximum density of 25,000.

As diamondgeezer notes, the square is bordered by three major roads the A11, A12 and A13, and curiously considering the London Mayor’s push to get everyone on public transport, the area has no stations and only two intermittent single-deck bus routes.

If Bow is packed with people, where is London’s most uninhabited?

For this, we turn again to the 2021 Census, with this area likely to be more accurate as there are few opportunities to live off the grid.

It’s probably no surprise to find the City of London is the clear winner with only 2,962 per Km².

If you think we’re living cheek by jowl spare a thought for Barcelona with one grid square exceeding 50,000 per km².