In this paper, we study small planar drawings of planar graphs. For arbitrary planar graphs, Θ(n2 ) is the established upper and lower bound on the worst-case area. It is a long-standing open problem for what graphs smaller area can be achieved, with results known only for trees and outer-planar graphs. We show here that series-parallel can be drawn in O(n3/2 ) area, but 2-outer-planar graphs and planar graphs of proper pathwidth 3 require Ω(n2 ) area