Divide Luxembourg into squares of one kilometre by one kilometre. Relate each square to a number of inhabitants. This was the exercise that Statec, the grand duchy’s statistics bureau, undertook for the first time.

If, unsurprisingly, the first finding is that the population is not evenly distributed, two other figures stand out:

- 41.5% of the “squares” are not inhabited at all. “These are mainly agricultural and forest areas, where the construction of residential buildings is generally prohibited. In addition, the cells along the national borders are largely uninhabited,” explains Statec. Forests occupy 88,000 hectares, or 34%, of Luxembourg’s surface area, according to the ministry of the environment.

- 89.5% of the territory is unpopulated or sparsely populated, as “of the occupied cells, 48% are inhabited by 1 to 499 people.”

Click to see the map on the Statec website.

Less than 8% of these cells are inhabited by 5 to 1,999 people; 2% of the cells by 2,000 to 4,399 inhabitants (in light orange), 0.5% by 4,400 to 8,999 inhabitants (in dark orange) and only 0.1% by more than 8,999 inhabitants (in dark red).

These areas are mainly located in the capital and its suburbs, as well as in the former mining basin in the south and southwest of Luxembourg.

The most densely populated cell is located in the city of Luxembourg, between the districts of Gare, Bonnevoie-Nord and Bonnevoie-Sud, where 14,663 inhabitants live on one square kilometre. The further away from the urban centre, the less populated the squares are and 34% have no inhabitants at all, including the Grengewald forest.

The second most populated cell is in the municipality of Esch-sur-Alzette, with 11,196 residents.

This story was first published in French on . It has been translated and edited for Delano.