This visualization of the growth and expansion of London form nothing to something like a galaxy was created by the theorists at the NYU Stern Urbanization Project:

The main goal of the NYU Stern Urbanization Project is to theorize the final home (or the fullest possible realization of the home) for a kind of great ape who is still very new in the world, who has been around for only 5000 years so, and who formed and stabilized his/her niche (sand, crushed stones, binder, steel, silica, wood) through cultural evolution rather than biological: homo urbanus.