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minimum population oi anout o.uuu people might be the crossover point below which there would be too few people in the county. Currently, the 1999 population estimate shows there are 7,664 people in the county. That equals 29 people per square mile.
Last week, we started on the "too many" end of the spectrum. The population levels of the surrounding counties were noted, with Fauquier County having a high of 55,206 people. Is that too many? Then Arlington County, the most densely populated county in Virginia, was cited. Arlington County has a population of 174,848 people in an area of 26 square miles, for a population density of 6,725 people per square mile. Too many?
At the end of the last article, we began exploring the very high end of population density. Going back in history, it was discovered that in 1855, in the East Side of New York City, slum tenements had a population density pf 290,000 people per square mile. Again, note that Rappahannock County's population density is currently 29 people per square mile.
We might continue exploring the very high end, and check what is currently the most populous area on earth, the Yaumatai and Mong Kok areas of Kowloon, part of Hong Kong. There, the population density is said to be close to 250,000 people per square mile, down from New York City's East Side of 290,000 per square mile in 1855.
Could more be squeezed in? Yes. 40 years ago, in 1960, taking a year off from work to travel around the world, the author ended up in the above-noted Mong Kok area of Kowloon with a mild case of dysentery, obtained from eating a bad lunch in Bangkok, Thailand. Inexpensive rest and recuperation were needed. I was able to talk my way into staying at a Chinese rooming house in Mong Kok.
My room, one of many in the building, was lined with double bunks. My bunk, about three feet by three feet by six feet, was my space. No mattress, just some boards and a rattan mat. My roommates were all Chinese. A few had escaped from Communist China by swimming across Hong Kong harbor. I was, in fact, in amongst the cage-dwellers of Hong Kong. The term cage-dwellers comes from some residents putting chicken wire around their enclosures for privacy and to protect their personal belongings from theft.
It was not bad for a short while. You could sit up and lie down. The place was relatively neat. There was a water shortage, so you could only shower and wash up in an outside courtyard during a two-hour period each morning. All my traveling possessions were in an oldstyle diplomatic briefcase, which I carried with me everywhere I went. I also used it as a pillow at night.
But some cage-dwellers have spent over 30 or 40 years in such places. In the mid-1990s, there were an estimated 10,000 people living in such cages, or in small cubicles, or in parti
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