Country · 23 regions
Where New Zealand's land ends up, by people and by money
Every block on the map is 0.1% of New Zealand. By land, Auckland holds 1.6%. By people, it holds 33%. Southland goes the other way, from 11% of the land to 1.9% of the people.
| Region | Land | People | GDP |
|---|---|---|---|
| Auckland | 1.6 | 33 | 37 |
| Canterbury | 17 | 14 | 14 |
| Wellington | 3.1 | 11 | 13 |
| Waikato | 8.8 | 10 | 8.7 |
| Bay of Plenty | 4.6 | 5.6 | 4.9 |
| Manawatu-Wanganui | 8.1 | 5.2 | 4.0 |
| Otago | 12 | 5.1 | 4.7 |
| Hawke's Bay | 5.8 | 3.7 | 2.9 |
| Northland | 4.7 | 3.2 | 2.1 |
| Taranaki | 2.8 | 2.7 | 3.2 |
| Southland | 11 | 1.9 | 1.9 |
| Nelson City | 0.10 | 1.2 | 1.2 |
| Tasman District | 3.7 | 1.1 | 1.0 |
| Marlborough District | 4.1 | 1.0 | 1.0 |
| Gisborne District | 3.1 | 0.90 | 0.70 |
| West Coast | 8.2 | 0.40 | 0.30 |
| Antipodes Islands | 0.10 | 0.00 | 0.00 |
| Auckland Islands | 0.30 | 0.00 | 0.00 |
| Campbell Islands | 0.10 | 0.00 | 0.00 |
| Chatham Islands Territory | 0.20 | 0.00 | 0.00 |
| Kermadec Islands | 0.10 | 0.00 | 0.00 |
| Three Kings Islands | 0.10 | 0.00 | 0.00 |
| Tokelau | 0.10 | 0.00 | 0.00 |
How the map is made
Regions are drawn on an equal-area grid of about 1,000 blocks. For land, each region keeps the blocks its territory covers. For people and GDP, the country is reshaped so every region gets a whole number of blocks in proportion to its share (Hamilton's largest-remainder method), keeping neighbours next to each other. Then every block is matched to one block on the next map, so you watch the same thousand blocks rearrange.
Grids: popgrid by Josep Ferrer (MIT). Boundaries: Natural Earth. Population: national censuses where curated, GHS-POP 2025 (JRC, European Commission) elsewhere. GDP: Kummu et al. 2025 gridded GDP PPP (CC BY 4.0). Built by Crafter Station.