Name: The Most Absurdly Overcrowded Island on Earth
Uploaded: 2025-06-17T16:00:37.000Z
Duration: 41 min 21 s
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I've always been fascinated with the extremes of human population patterns.

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Both the parts of the world that are unusually empty, and the parts of the world that are unusually crowded.

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And I recently came across what might just be the most interesting and most unusually crowded location in the entire world.

This tiny little island in the middle of the Indian Ocean, that's known as Malé.

Which is probably the most densely populated island in the world today, and maybe the most densely populated island ever seen in history.

You see, Malé is the capital city of the Maldives.

An archipelagic state in the Indian Ocean that's located hundreds of kilometers away from the Asian mainland in India.

There are no less than 1,196 separate and distinct islands that are located within the Maldives.

The largest of all of these nearly 1,200 islands is no larger than 4 square kilometers.

And they're all stretched out across a vast distance that spans for about 871 kilometers north to south.

Despite encompassing an area that makes up around 90,000 square kilometers in total.

More than 99% of the Maldives territory is open ocean.

And only a tiny 298 square kilometers of that total area is actually land.

Making the Maldives one of the smallest countries in the world in terms of available land.

With a current population of about 528,000 people today.

This makes the Maldives the fifth most densely populated country in the world today.

Largely only behind city-states like Monaco, Singapore, and Vatican City.

But in truth, the Maldives are way more densely populated than even this list implies.

Because despite having nearly 1,200 islands and 298 square kilometers worth of available land to choose from to live on.

Nearly half of the entire country's population lives on just two next door islands.

That only make up around 6 square kilometers.

The city of Male itself, administratively speaking, encompasses seven separate nearby small islands near the archipelago center.

Though only four of them are significant from a geographic size or population standpoint.

The total population of the whole city today is around 263,000 people.

Nearly half the total population of the Maldives.

But only three of these islands within the city are really inhabited by all of these people.

There's Villan Gilly, the smallest inhabited island in the city which is home to around 7,000 people.

Then there's the artificially made Hohumale Island.

Which has been under construction since 1997 and is currently home to around 66,000 other people.

And is about four square kilometers in size.

Which would already make it one of the most densely populated islands in the world.

With a similar scale of density as Hong Kong Island is currently in China.

But Hohumale's already impressive density in the middle of the ocean.

Is eclipsed by the even more catastrophic density that's going on right next door.

From which the greater city of Male takes its overall name from.

At a mere 1.95 square kilometers in total area.

The tiny island of Male is the core of Male the city and of the Maldives as a whole.

Translated literally from the native Divehi language of the islands.

Implying that all of the other islands in the country are ruled directly from the center of power in Male.

As of 2024, based on the Maldives most recent census numbers from 2022.

And the United Nations population estimates for 2024.

It's believed that there are currently around a whopping 190,000 people.

Who live together crowded on this tiny little island.

Roughly 36% of the Maldives entire population.

And which makes this little island in the middle of the Indian Ocean.

Not only among the most densely populated islands in the world.

But one of the most densely populated places in the world today period.

Male's population density today is about 97,436 people per square kilometer.

Which makes it more than three times as densely populated of an island as Manhattan is in New York City.

Wikipedia maintains an extensive list of islands by population density.

But from the research that I put into this list for this video.

It appears that this Wikipedia list is still using outdated census data for Male's population from the year 2006.

Which at this point is nearly 20 years outdated.

Plenty of other islands on this list have been updated with much more recent data from the 2020s.

So if we take the current UN population estimate for Male Island.

And update it on this list along with all of the other islands.

Male's true rank on the list should actually put it very firmly in third place worldwide by overall density.

Behind only two other very small islands in Haiti that have very tiny populations.

Compared to Male's nearly 200,000 people.

So besides for these two little Haitian islands that have fewer than a thousand people between both of them.

Male is truly the most densely populated island in the world today.

And it certainly looks like it when you view it through Google Maps.

No amount of space was wasted on the island.

The concrete coverage of it quite literally stretches out from the center of the island to the very edge of the sea.

Soaring skyscrapers fill up the limited space of the island.

Within a country where no natural point stretches more than five meters above sea level.

Crowded streets below are full of people, cars, and motorbikes everywhere.

The sound of constant traffic making you feel as if you were in a blender.

The very limited housing and space means that multiple generations all living together in a single room is the norm here.

The city looks like something that was pulled directly out of SimCity in a real life.

Or if you're a cultured individual, it looks like a real life version of a one tile island mega city that you'd build in one of the Sid Meier's Civilization games.

In fact, Male is so small that it's a fraction of the size of several open world RPG games.

It is a minuscule fraction the size of the map in Grand Theft Auto 5, for example.

And it's more similar to the map size found in the now ancient Grand Theft Auto Vice City.

The island of Male itself is less than two kilometers wide at its absolute widest point.

It's possible to walk across the entire island east to west in only about 20 minutes.

While it's also possible to completely circumnavigate the entire island on foot in only about 90 minutes.

It is a very, very small space for 190,000 people to all live contained in.

On Wikipedia's other list of the most densely populated cities in the world, Male already appears in fifth place.

Though this list factors in the total number of islands that are within the city, some of which are uninhabited.

And which also uses the population figure of the city acquired from the 2022 Maldives Census.

Rather than the UN's 2024 estimate that I'm using.

So if instead you plugged in the UN's 2024 population estimate for Male, it would suddenly jump up into being the third most densely populated city in the world.

And if you considered only the little island of Male itself with its 190,000 people, it would be by far the number one most densely populated city in the world.

With more than double the density that's seen in Manila, Giza, and Croix-de-Bouquet.

And what makes Male's insane level of density all the more bizarre is that it's also basically in the middle of nowhere.

A mini Manhattan more than three times denser than the real Manhattan.

Surrounded by hundreds of kilometers of absolute nothingness in every direction.

In sharp contrast to the other super dense cities on Wikipedia's list like Giza and Croix-de-Bouquet.

Which are really just parts of the greater Cairo and Port-au-Prince metropolitan areas that are very close by to other huge population centers.

The island of Male is insanely interesting to me.

Not just because it's arguably the most densely populated island and the most densely populated city in the world today.

But also because it's basically all a speck of incredible record shattering density that's all in the middle of absolutely nowhere.

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The Most Absurdly Overcrowded Island on Earth

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