Didn’t like crowds before the COVID-19 pandemic and enjoy them even less now? A Social Explorer analysis of 2015-19 American Community Survey data finds three neighborhoods in the United States have more than 20,000 people per square mile. The most crowded Census tract in the country (35,345 people per square mile) is located in the Bronx, New York. The tract includes Co-op City, the largest cooperative housing complex in the world.

The Bronx neighborhood is followed by a tract that includes San Francisco’s Soma neighborhood at the foot of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge (26,462 people per square mile) and a northwest Miami-Dade County neighborhood where 23,842 people live within a square mile. For people living in cities, five-digit population densities may not seem so crowded, but it’s a big country: The U.S. averages 92 people per square mile, or 0.2 percent of the most-crowded tract in the country.

Check out the crowds in your neighborhood using Social Explorer’s easy-to-use report generating and mapping tools.

Population Density, 2019. Click Here to Explore Further.

Author: Frank Bass