A lovely map, but the scale could be calibrated slightly better - 5% growth is coloured the same as 25% growth, it would have been interesting to see areas of extremely high growth highlighted as well.
Not really: growth -> becoming more popular, but not necessarily popular, in the absolute sense, which is based on density comparissons, of course: going from 10 to 15 inhabitants is a 50% growth, but it is not more popular than a city with 2 million habitants, even it that city is having a population loss of 1%.
Well, don't move the goalposts like this. I never said 'absolute'. You're also arguing from extremes, which isn't appropriate, given that the map is a mostly closed system - population comes from the blue and goes to the orange, with some outside immigration. For the most part, the amount of orange and blue in the map will balance, none of this "orange areas have a population you can count on your fingers, blue areas are jam-packed metropoles" imbalance. Particularly since most of the areas in the map have a four-figure population - they're mostly in the same order of magnitude, not the five orders of magnitude difference that you're suggesting. Run your pointer over the map and check out the populations.
You're also conflating "populous" with "popular". For example, slums are jam-packed with people (= populous), but that doesn't mean that they all want to be there (= popular).
