Quote:
Originally Posted by hbtaylor
He is also off on the population density of Trantor. He refers to 40 billion people covering 75 million square miles, and complains that it is less than the population density of New Jersey. He would be correct if people lived in buildings like in New Jersey. But Asimov goes to pains throughout the various novels to describe the people live vertically below the surface, so the population density needs to take into account the volume, not just area.
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Asimov said how big Trantor was or how much dry land surface it had in the habitable zone.
But Krugman's point is in fact valid: Asimov had scaling troubles with population density. In CAVES OF STEEL the total population of Earth in the City culture is off by an order of magnitude, give or take a Green Revolution or three.
