I tweeted this out last week:
Not surprisingly, the responses were divided. Some responded saying that beauty is more important than density, and a lot of people were quick to point out that there's good density and there's bad density. And because I can appreciate both of these comments, it made me think that I should probably elaborate on my glib tweet.
The points I was trying to vaguely imply are the following.
More often than not (at least for North American cities), I think our problem is not too much density, it's too little. This translates into cities that aren't walkable, aren't conducive to transit, and that are overall less sustainable. Right now, every mayoral candidate in Toronto is promising to fix our crippling traffic congestion. I don't know how they're going to do it, but they're promising it because they know it's something people are pissed off about.
But here's my take: counterintuitively, the problem is not enough density. The problem is that too many people in our region have no reasonable way to get around without a car. So they're forced to drive. The way you fix this not as simple as more traffic enforcement or better signal timing. Good luck! You fix it through density, because density is what makes other forms of mobility suddenly possible.
All of this is not to say that density alone will render you a great city. Obviously things like beauty also matter a great deal. But in my opinion, density is a fundamental component. Because what good is beauty if you don't have any urban vibrancy? The answer is that you probably don't have a real city.
The other point I was trying to make is that space and density are both relative and oftentimes difficult to understand. We think building height and density are correlated, but that's not always the case. Look at Paris or Barcelona. We also like to make a lot of spatial rules that we think are right and make our cities better: streets should be at least this wide, buildings should be no taller than the width of the street, and so on.
But here (pictured above) is a street that narrows to around 6 meters and has buildings that are probably 2.5-3x the width of the right-of-way. Sure, it also happens to be beautiful, historic, and Italian. But what would happen if you maintained this same beauty and made the street 5x as wide and lined up parking in front of the stores?
Somehow it wouldn't be as enjoyable as what you see here.
