Bromley and Hackney are both in London, but housing density-wise they might as well be different countries. One has detached houses, gardens, and a generally suburban feel. The other is layered Victorian terraces, converted flats, and housing that stacks people in ways the outer boroughs simply don’t. London as a whole averages 24.1 dwellings per hectare, roughly twice the density of Greater Manchester (9.94 dph) or the West Midlands (13.35 dph), and it’s Europe’s third most populated city with 9.1 million residents.
The map above uses 2015 LSOA housing data on a 200m x 200m grid, recording homes per hectare in each square. Parks, roads, hospitals and industrial areas have been removed where possible, so the focus is on genuinely residential land.
Density (dw/ha)
Per km² (dwellings)
Per sq mile (dwellings)
Housing character
Typical location
30–50
3,000–5,000
7,800–13,000
Detached and semi-detached houses, gardens, driveways
Outer boroughs, e.g. Bromley, Bexley, Havering
30–65
3,000–6,500
7,800–16,800
Semi-detached houses, wider suburban terraces
Outer zones, e.g. parts of Barnet, outer Ealing
50–110
5,000–11,000
13,000–28,500
Victorian and Edwardian terraces, some low-rise conversions
Tower blocks, large housing estates, heavily converted rows
Densest pockets of inner London, e.g. Tower Hamlets
Part of the reason the outer ring looks so quiet is that more than 40% of Greater London is green space or open water. Add the green belt, which has been stopping the city from spreading outward since the mid-20th century, and all that growth pressure has had to go inward and upward instead.
Kensington and Chelsea, London’s densest borough, averages around 70.6 dwellings per hectare. Islington’s population density is about 138 people per hectare. High numbers, but Madrid’s Centro district averages 286 people per hectare on a similar kind of old street grid, roughly double. If outer London’s residential land had been built at inner London’s average density, the capital would have around 4.6 million more homes.
