The Debate Over Future Density of Development (Working Paper)

An Interpretive Review

Author(s): Myers, Dowell and Alicia Kitsuse
Publication Date: January 1999

40 pages; Inventory ID WP99DM1; English


The Debate Over Future Density of Development	217 KB

Abstract

Projections for rapid population growth by the year 2020 have increasingly focused planners' attention on the issue of the future density of development. This paper offers an interpretative review of major positions taken within the debate over future density, adopting a temporal, as well as spatial, perspective. While the debate is frequently conducted in factual terms, the literature on density is highly subjective, involving alternative views of the future as well as a fundamental divergence between long- and short-term, and collective and individual economic orientations. This review contrasts the positions held by proponents of compact development and sprawl, with a special section dedicated to a discussion of the various meanings of these two terms. Subsequent sections examine dueling reports on future development in California produced by the Bank of America and Wells Fargo Bank, the relationship of the new urbanism to density, and the tension within developers' interests relating to sprawl, on the one hand, and compact development and the new urbanism on the other.