Where did the change begin?
Labs / Geography
Population Density Mapper
Drag across the map to settle people — a tight brush builds a city, a loose one scatters villages. A grid counts everyone cell by cell and shades each square by how crowded it is, so you can see at a glance where the countryside ends and the city begins.
Labs / Geography / Population Density Mapper
Population Density Mapper
Drag across the map to settle people — a tight brush builds a city, a loose one scatters villages. A grid counts everyone cell by cell and shades each square by how crowded it is, so you can see at a glance where the countryside ends and the city begins.
Why it matters
Why explore this?
Geography explains how places, people, and Earth systems affect one another. This model lets you change one factor and watch its effects spread across space.
Explore
Try the model
Pop 0Avg 0/km²Peak 0/km²Rural 0/km²
Investigate
Questions to test
Predict first, try it in the model, then use what you observe to answer.
What to try
- What happens to the peak density when you pack a city into one corner versus spreading the same people out?
- Slide the grid from 4×4 up to 24×24 — why does the peak cell's density keep climbing as the cells shrink?
- With Terrain on, why do your brushed people refuse to settle on the mountains and desert?
- Can you make the average density high while the sparsest rural cell stays tiny? What does that gap tell you about a country?
- Turn off the dots and keep only the choropleth — is it easier or harder to judge exactly how many people live there?
Explain
Make sense of what happened
Connect the pattern to place: identify where the change begins, where its effects appear, and which process links those locations.
Check
Before you leave
What spatial pattern appeared?
Which process connects the cause and effect?
If you can answer all three using evidence from the model, you understand the main idea. If not, return to Explore and change one setting at a time.