Puerto Rico has a population of 3,667,084 and a land area of 8,871 kilometers squared. This comes out to a population density of approximately 413 people per square kilometer. This is a significantly smaller population density than comparable populations with less land area.
In the chart below we can see the fluctuation in population and people per house hold between 1990 and 2000 this pattern has been estimated to have continued |
Puerto Rico is comparable in size to Connecticut; a bit smaller in terms of land mass but very similar in population. For the past few decades there has been and there continues to be a decrease in population in developed urban areas while the total population of the island has been relatively stable with minimal fluctuation. This is a good sign for possible mitigation strategies because it allows for the conservation of land do to the lack of growth in population, this in turn means not much expansion of urban area needs to occur with the appropriate land use planning knowledge, implementation, and monitoring. There has also been a decrease in people per housing unit from 3.49 in 1990 to 3.15 in 2000 (U.S approximately 2.2), this can be explained by and is influenced by economic, social, and cultural factors. This pattern is representative of an economy abandoning its agricultural roots and is predicted to continue. The graph bellow reiterates the decrease in population density in recent years. |