dewline: Text - "On the DEWLine" (Default)
[personal profile] dewline
78 million sentients.

That's the population of Metropolis during the Legion's first year, according to Brainiac 5. "78 million sentient inhabitants in the urban zone before you reach the greenbelt" being the exact phrasing as recorded in Adventure # 515.

It's been three or four months since that issue saw print, but that figure has started to nag at me a little. So, I did a little digging. I'll do it again here, just to make sure that the "show your work" crowd is working from the same playbook.

Here's a map of 30th Century Metropolis as sanctioned by Legion writer past and present Paul Levitz, and modified for re-use back in Who's Who in the LSH # 6, circa 1988:

Legion-Era-Metro-Giffen

Using 2009 estimates from the US census people as provided by Wikipedia...

Connecticut: 3,518,288
Rhode Island: 1,053,209
Massachussetts: 6,593,587

New York and New Jersey get a little tricky here, seeing as not all of each of those two states gets incorporated into the boundaries of Legion Era Metropolis...so we're going to put that off to "Step Two", which may involve a little Google Earth, a little Photoshop...

Date: 2010-09-19 01:56 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] shanejayell.livejournal.com
Figuring population density?

Date: 2010-09-19 02:01 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] dewline.livejournal.com
A bit of that. Also comparing real-'verse population for the region at present - with and without DCU-specific hotspots like Metropolis and Gotham as we know them in the here'n'now added in - with the above-cited figure...there's a few mixed-up different goals in mind here.

By the by...

Date: 2010-09-19 02:57 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] dewline.livejournal.com
...if you don't mind a nosy question: you have an interest in urban issues, beyond the fictional?

Re: By the by...

Date: 2010-09-19 03:09 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] dewline.livejournal.com
No worries. Nosy people can sometimes bring useful insights to the table.

Meta Note

Date: 2010-09-19 04:10 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] duncanmac.livejournal.com
Tiffany Chow's website will disappear along with the rest of Vox on 30 Sept. You may want to re-point your link to her new website on Typepad (http://tiffchow.typepad.com/voxblog/).

Re: Meta Note

Date: 2010-09-19 04:35 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] dewline.livejournal.com
Duly noted, although the linkage is provided along with her template design by LJ's own servers. Wondering if LJ management will be doing their own updating...?

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