Visualizing Manhattan's Shrinking Density

According to a new map created by Brandon Fuller, Manhattan's residential densities have dramatically shrunk since 1910. As reported on Vox by Matthew Yglesias, many tracts have dramatically lost residential density since 1910 in part because of, "the expansion of the midtown office district, which crowded out residential housing. But most of it reflects the fact that modern-day people take up much more space than our predecessors of a century ago."

Indeed, the most dramatic decreases in persons per hectare occur in the Lower East Side where the "working class used to crowd into tenement dwellings," and also in the Upper East and West sides, along the boulevards lining Central Park where, "siblings sharing a bedroom was more common among the non-poor, and the households of the wealthy were packed with domestic servants living in tiny maid's rooms."