NUMBERS: We all know that fewer people call our region home than do urban areas of the state.
Looking at populations of counties, it’s easy to see the difference in numbers. Philadelphia County, for example, has a population of 1.58 million, to McKean County’s 40,968.
When you look at it broken down to population density per square mile, the difference seems even more staggering. According to the Center for Rural Pennsylvania, the population density of McKean County is 44 people per square mile.
In Philadelphia County, it’s a whopping 11,379 people per square mile.
We looked up New York City, and it puts Philly to shame. The population density there is 26,403 people per square mile, the largest in the U.S.
For us rural folks, it’s hard to imagine living in a place with so many people so close together.
We checked on other counties in the state. The smallest population density is in Cameron County, with just 13 people per square mile.
Elk County has 39, and Potter County has 16.
Nearby Warren County has a population density similar to McKean County’s, at 47 people per square mile. Clearfield County, where DuBois is located, has 71 people per square mile.
Erie County has 351, while Dauphin County — home of Harrisburg — has 511.
We were surprised that Allegheny County — home of Pittsburgh — wasn’t closer to Philadelphia in population density, but its number was 1,676.
We did a little math to draw a more visual comparison.
It would take nearly every person in McKean and Warren counties together to fill New Era Field, the Buffalo Bills’ stadium. That would be roughly the same as 6 square miles of people in Philadelphia.
The size of McKean County is 984 square miles. If the population density were equal to that of Philadelphia County, there would be more than 11 million people living here.
Cameron County is 398 square miles. If the population density were equal to that of New York City, that would mean 10 million people would be living there.
Philadelphia County is 141.7 square miles. What a different picture it would be if the population density there were similar to ours. Could you imagine a Philadelphia with 6,000 people?
Mind boggling, isn’t it?
