Waterbury Ranks in Top 10 Most Crowded City in America

It doesn't take a genius to realize that space is at a premium here in the Northeast United States. Most of us who have lived around the greater New York City/Boston/Connecticut Megalopolis are used to postage stamp-sized apartments and no backyard. Most of Connecticut is thickly forested and you can't see all of the homes hidden by hedges, gated communities, and bends in the road.

But that's not so when you drive through my hometown of Waterbury. Look to the right or the left as you pass through the elevated stretch of the Mixmaster-Rt.8/I-84 interchange and you'll see beautiful churches, a big clock tower and a big cross and a whole lotta multi-family homes. So many multi-family homes that Waterbury stands right up there with NYC and Boston on the "Most Crowded Cities In America List"  that was just released from rent.com.

According to the article, they crunched the numbers of every American city with a population of over 50,000 people. They divided the population of each city by the city's land area to arrive at the population density. The higher that number, the more crowded a city actually is.

As you can imagine, New York City came in as the runaway winner of America's Most Crowded City, with a population of 8.3 Million and a land area of 302 square miles - NYC's 27,500 people per square mile is unbeatable. The next 6 of the list aren't too surprising - No. 2 - Charlotte, NC, 3 - Rochester, MN, 4 - St. Petersburg, FL, 5 - Rockford, IL, 6 - Avondale, AZ, and 7 - Good ol' Boston, Mass. Boston has a population density of 14,345, a little more than half of NYC's.

Then, at number 8 on the list of the Most Crowded Cities in America - Waterbury, Connecticut. With a population density of 14,042 people per square mile. It breaks down to Waterbury's 107,568 residents packed into it's 7.66 square miles. I've always thought of Waterbury being a massive city as far as square mileage goes, but when you think about it, 7.6 square miles is really small in the big scheme of things. There are no other Connecticut cities in the top 50 of the list.

On the converse side of this coin, if you'd like to live in the least crowded city in America, make plans to move to Lincoln, Nebraska. Lincoln has 17,000 square miles with a respectable population of almost 300,000 people. That's a population density of 169 people per square mile, luxurious.