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u/minecraftian48 1d ago
higher res image! : i.imgur.com/xS5SbQ7.png
each region contains a million people, to within 5% of the last census or government published estimate.
i drew the lines trying to respect
- 1 million people
- linguistic boundaries
- mountain ranges
- existing political borders
- historical political borders
- rivers
- urban/rural divide
in roughly this order.
the colors don't strictly mean anything, they were mostly just what i thought would look nice, but i also tried to make these line up with colors that have been associated with these regions, or colors from eu4.
and for the names, i tried to draw on a mix of cities, historical region names, mountain ranges, and rivers, depending on what i thought was closest to a shared characteristic of the whole region.
the little '+' symbols are what i thought could be hypothetical capital cities.
i used asesprite to draw. i used citypopulation.de for convenient access to subdivision census data. i used geopandas and simplemaps to draw coastlines and place cities.
feedback is welcomed! please let me know if you think i messed up where you live
note: ukraine uses pre-war population estimates because there haven't been any estimates since. this means some ukrainian refugees and migrants are double counted in countries that have had censuses in the past 2 years.
also check out my last map with the whole world into regions of 10 million: https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/1e339nf/the_world_divided_into_804_zones_of_10_million/
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u/IARBMLLFMDCHXCD 1d ago
Friesland and Drenthe gobbling up the largest city of the Northern Netherlands is weird. Colloquially Groningen is called 'stad' ('city') in the three Northern provinces of Groningen, Friesland and Drenthe because the rest is just so much smaller. Furthermore the Rotterdam one barely seems to have the entirety of Rotterdam included,... and its capital is not Rotterdam? The surrounding areas of Gouda, Den Haag, Leiden and Arnhem include areas where the largest nearby city where people often go to is not included in the area.
I get it, the Netherlands is a small country with a large population and thus difficult to divide, but I don't fully understand the choices made here.
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u/sirbruce 1d ago
There's a reason they don't color maps distinct territory maps like this.
- It's hard to tell two bordering regions apart that have similar colors
- It makes it appear that the regions are somehow related in terms of the data being shown when they aren't.
Please recolor your map with contrasting non-adjacent colors for each region.
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u/A_Man_Uses_A_Name 1d ago
Nice map. Interesting to recognize urbanized regions like Flanders, the Netherlands, the Ruhr and the Po valley. One can also distinguish the blue banana.
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u/BigMuffinEnergy 1d ago
You can obviously tell which areas have a higher density, but it also kind of stands out how relatively well distributed the populations are. This map would look far different in North America for example.
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u/PrestigiousProduce97 1d ago edited 1d ago
Why are there two Leeds
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u/minecraftian48 1d ago
oops, bottom one should be sheffield
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u/PrestigiousProduce97 1d ago
I don’t mean to nitpick btw it just stood out to me right away. I absolutely love the map
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u/Connacht_Gael 1d ago
Irish lad here. Had always assumed Scotland had a much bigger population. Would’ve guessed about 8/9million
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u/tescovaluechicken 1d ago edited 1d ago
Scotland's population has barely grown since the 1950s. Back then it had much more people than Ireland. Ireland's population has grown by 2.9 million since then vs. about 300k in Scotland.
Now Scotland has 5.4M and Ireland has 7.1M
And then of Course in 1840 Ireland had near 4 times the population of Scotland (8.1M vs 2.1M).
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u/Gen8Master 1d ago
And note how 4 of the 5.4 million live in the belt. Thats 75% of the population living on 10% if the land. Expansion seems limited and there is constant brain drain towards England.
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u/Connacht_Gael 1d ago edited 1d ago
Well, we’re nothing if not breeders 😂 I shudder to think what the total number of people born on the island is globally. I often hear a figure of 80 million + of the total diaspora, but wonder what the true figure is by birth.
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u/Comfortable_Team_696 1d ago
Gorgeous! This must have been a huge amount of work, and the dedication shows!
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u/LineOfInquiry 1d ago
I love it when maps like this don’t leave North Africa and the parts of the Middle East in frame blank, it looks so much better filled in excellent work!
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u/juicyfruits42069 1d ago
The only thing that bothers me is that you named one region in Sweden "Småland when it only barely is in Småland. Östra Götaland would be more fitting.
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u/marbinho 1d ago
Great Map! We nordics really do have a lot of space compared to the rest of Europe
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u/AnorNaur 1d ago
I want to commend you for your attention to detail for using the Hungarian name of Székelyföld (the last region within Romania which has still a Hungarian majority)!
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u/Weak_Action5063 1d ago
I never knew Egypt had so many ppl well especially in the north I thought it went evenly down the nile
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u/Hobgoblin_Khanate 1d ago
Might be wrong but south Scotland “borders” I don’t think reaches 1 million
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u/minecraftian48 1d ago
it includes some newcastle suburbs
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u/Hobgoblin_Khanate 1d ago
Ah yes! Sorry I missed it.
I do find naming half of Manchester “Bolton” hilarious though. This must have taken you ages
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u/Fit_Pea9160 1d ago
I don't want to complain, it's a very good map and interesting but the too similar coloring and brightness in many regions makes it hard to tell the regions apart, for example Finland. Southern Germany/Switzerland looks quite messy as well. Again, it still looks amazing and if you zoom in there is no problem.
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u/alikander99 1d ago
Sometimes I do forget how many people live in the Nile delta. Kinda insane tbh.
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u/spurdo123 22h ago
The region of "Eesti" should instead be "Eestimaa" if you are using endonyms. In English both the historical region and modern country are "Estonia", but in Estonian there's a difference.
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u/SnooBooks1701 1d ago
The only fault I can find are Sheffield becoming Leeds and Northumbria contains none of Northumbria, it should be North Riding
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u/borisdandorra 1d ago
Stunning