A sea of humanity

So darned many people here. Good grief.

I was reminded of a conversation I had last week about the size and complexity of Los Angeles by Tale of Lesser Los Angeles and the conversation which started it, Psst, 411: Valley Seccession Didn't Pass. Time for some basic research. It's interesting that Kevin pegs the population of the Valley at 1.3 million or so, assuming 40% of LA's population lives there. Based on recent numbers, we're talking about nearly 1.6 million folks.

I had some interesting misconceptions too. I pegged the city population at about 5 million and the county at 7 million. Even though I knew the state was at 36 million, I figured the SoCal coastal area was around 10 million. Those numbers are just a little outside (why isn't Uecker's wonderful quote listed somewhere?) More realistic estimates for city and county are 4 million and 10 million. The city of LA is enormous, but it skips many populous areas.

Digging around led me to the Wikipedia entry for Los Angeles, California and an interesting image (I've probably got the master for this somewhere as a 60 Meg TIFF) Los Angeles urban sprawl, which claims to represent 15 million people (the article claims 16 million). That has to be wrong, doesn't it?

Based on information from the US Census Bureau and the easiest to find breakdown of California by County, we get the starting numbers below. The 2005 estimates are based on 7% growth, which sometimes exceeds the 2004 numbers I have found and sometimes trails them. Seemed like a good fudge factor for now.

County	2000	2005 est
Los Angeles	9,519,338	10,185,691
Orange	2,846,289	3,045,529
Riverside	1,545,387	1,653,564
San Bernardino	1,709,434	1,829,094
Ventura	753,197	805,920
Total		17,519,798

The numbers set me back for a bit. They're really close. Given that parts of Riverside, San Bernardino and Ventura are lopped off the map, 15 million is a darned good guess and 16 million seems like it's on the way. That set me to thinking, what about the mythical San Angeles (the Santa Barbara to San Diego megalopolis)? Here are some modern numbers.

County	2000	2005 est
Los Angeles	9,519,338	10,185,691
Orange	2,846,289	3,045,529
Riverside	1,545,387	1,653,564
San Bernardino	1,709,434	1,829,094
San Diego	2,813,833	3,010,801
Santa Barbara	399,347	427,301
Ventura	753,197	805,920
Total		20,957,900

21 million people living and and working in coastal Southern California. Amazing. Shocking actually.