A TINY harbour city packed with millions of people is the pen picture of Hong Kong.
Over the past 20 years, the population of Hong Kong increased by 41 per cent from 4.18 million in 1972 to 5.9 million in 1992.
Over the same period, the land area also grew by reclamation, from 1,045 to 1,076 square kilometres. The increase was three per cent or 31 sq km. A square kilometre approximates to an area as large as six Victoria Parks.
How to translate these two phenomena into a simple statistical measure, to show how ''overcrowded'' Hong Kong is? We compute the so-called population density.
Population density is computed by dividing the total population by the land area. It is expressed as number of persons per square kilometre.
In 1972, the overall density in Hong Kong was 4,004 persons per sq km. In 1992, the figure was as high as 5,485 per sq km, among the highest in the world.
In comparison, Tokyo has a density of 5,773 (in 1991) persons per sq km and Singapore 4,397 (in 1992) persons per sq km.