During a holiday in Iceland some years ago it amused me to learn how the USA manages to have 1000 times the population of Iceland. Approximately speaking it’s 10 times as long, 10 times as wide, and 10 times as densely populated.

I’ve just arrived to live in Lyon after a stay in New York and noticed that these cities have something in common: their heart is an angled peninsula running north-south between two rivers.  And how does Manhattan manage to have 27 times the population of Lyon’s Presqu’île? You guessed it. Approximately speaking it’s 3 times as long, 3 times as wide, and — this time we can say it less abstractly — 3 times as tall!

[8 November 2017]