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Metropolis c. 3000 ACE: "78 Million" - Step One
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:
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...
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:
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...