Most Densely Populated US Cities: People per Square Mile

Among US cities with at least 50,000 people in our data, Manhattan, NY is the densest, with about 71,341 people per square mile, followed by West New York, NJ and Union City, NJ. The table shows the 100 densest places.

What is the ranking?

What stands out?

The 100th place on the list has about 7,545 people per square mile, and the leader is about 9 times denser. The list is dominated by compact cities and suburbs near large metro areas, where small land area and high population meet. By our scale, anything above 5,000 people per square mile counts as an urban core.

Geographically, the 100 places on this list are spread over 15 states and territories. The most represented are California 38; New Jersey 16; New York 10; Massachusetts 8; Florida 8; Illinois 5. By time zone, the split is Eastern 54, Pacific 39, Central 6, Atlantic 1. The county that appears most often is Los Angeles County, CA, with 24 entries. Patterns like these show which regions produce the extreme values in the ranking, and they change if you tighten or loosen the population cutoff.

Use the table to jump to any city page for ZIP codes, nearby places and distances, or compare with the state-level lists that rank the same measure inside each state.

Frequently asked questions

Which city is first on this list? Manhattan, NY, in New York.

Which state appears most often? California, with 38 entries.

Are small towns included? Only places with at least 5,000 residents in our data have a page and a ranking, so very small communities are not shown. They still appear on county pages.

Is this an official ranking? No. It is calculated from one dataset using estimates, and official rankings from the Census Bureau can differ because of different boundaries and years.

How is this list made?

The data comes from the SimpleMaps US Cities Database. Population is an estimate, and density is converted from people per square kilometer to people per square mile. Estimates for large cities can reflect the wider urban area rather than the legal city limits, so use the lists to compare places inside one dataset rather than as official counts. See why population figures differ, and check the Census Bureau for official figures. The rankings are rebuilt whenever the site is regenerated from a newer copy of the data, so the date shown on the guides and legal pages tells you roughly how fresh they are. If you spot a result that looks wrong, please send us a correction with the page address.

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