Hyperdensity

Definition

Hyperdensity is the contemporary urbanist proposition — identified with Vishaan Chakrabarti's A Country of Cities (2013) and Edward Glaeser's Triumph of the City (2011) — that "an even higher concentration of humanity in dense urban cores" is the model urbanism should pursue (Keil 2015, p. 580). Its program is "hyperdensification, that is living at a density of 30 units per acre (which still does not take into account who and how many people live at such density or how they are living there)"; examples given are "Hong Kong, New York, but also European cities"; the "tower strategy explicitly rejects other forms of density enhancing options," holding that "the more high-rise density, the more productivity can be expected" (p. 587). Its credo, shared with Glaeser's Triumph of the City: dense form as "not… a container of but a catalyst for smart economies and people" — "It is indisputable that technology – the elevator, structural steel, and the subway – ushered in a different and fundamentally better way of life for billions" (Chakrabarti, quoted p. 587).

Keil's article is a sustained critique of the proposition — "I am critical of the hyper-density proposition" (p. 580) — mounted at three levels. (1) Its implicit equation: "density is associated with compactness and centrality" — yet "the density–centrality equation abstracts from a lot of other factors in the urban region": those "who manage and profit from that core productivity often live in the least dense and most exclusive exurbs at the region's edge"; "The complex geographies of power and wealth have to be factored into the equation" (pp. 586–587). (2) Its blind spots: the proposed remedy operates "on the scale of the house, the street and perhaps the neighbourhood, and leave[s] broader scales and topological relationships of those units unconsidered. The region and the world remain the blind spots of urban density" (p. 587). (3) Its politics: "Density can be one of the best ways to concentrate wealth and power; and density can be one of the best ways to concentrate poverty and oppression" (p. 586) — the "giga-mansion" and the condo tower alike are exclusions whose density is "utterly unimportant compared to the political power their inhabitants and their class exert over the entire region" (p. 590).

The logical opposite — the normative preference for low density, "mostly identified with a certain strand of American libertarianism" (Wendell Cox, Joel Kotkin) — is dismissed in passing: it "has little intellectual and no political merit or plausibility" (p. 580). Keil's target is thus the whole dichotomy, not either pole: "Density per se does not provide a sharp lens to understand the urbanism that takes shape here and the politics that naturalize its polarities into winning and losing modes of urban life" (p. 590).

This page requires fuller treatment — created at the Keil ingest; Chakrabarti's manifesto and Glaeser's urban economics await their own treatment (see log).

Key Thinkers

• Roger Keil — the concept's critic: the density-centrality equation abstracted, the blind spots named, the polarity-naturalizing politics named (2015)
• Vishaan Chakrabarti (not yet paged — see log) — A Country of Cities: A Manifesto for an Urban America (2013): hyperdensification at 30 units/acre; density as catalyst; the 61% single-detached fact; his concession that marginal-intensification fears are "justified in having that fear"
• Edward Glaeser (not yet paged — see log) — Triumph of the City (2011): the dense city as productivity engine
• Wendell Cox & Joel Kotkin (not yet paged — see log) — the libertarian low-density preference Keil dismisses as having "little intellectual and no political merit or plausibility" (2012, 2013)

Related Concepts

• post-suburban-densification — the wider contested field; hyperdensity is its aggressive pole
• towers-in-the-park — the inherited peripheral density form vs the core-strategy tower
• skyscraper-interior — the interior register of the tower strategy this wiki already holds
• metropolitan-architecture — the density register of metropolitan form
• urban-sprawl — the pole hyperdensity defines itself against ("growing U.S. cities have gained density… through sprawling borders")
• sustainability — the carbon caveat: professional clustering can "cancel out" the carbon benefits of density (Cohen)

Source Support

Sources in the wiki that discuss this concept:

• Towers in the Park, Bungalows in the Garden (Keil 2015) — the concept's founding source: the critique announced (p. 580); Chakrabarti's 61% figure and 30-units-per-acre remedy, "iceberg homes," the tower strategy quote (pp. 586–587); the blind-spot verdict (p. 587); the density-dichotomism refusal (p. 590)

Source Support linking rule: All entries in this section must be wikilinks to source note pages in wiki/source-notes/ using the source-notes/ path prefix. Never link to raw files — raw files are not wiki pages.

Open Questions

• Chakrabarti's own concession — people "are justified in having that fear" of development as congestion (quoted p. 587) — grants popular resistance a legitimacy the tower strategy otherwise overrules: is hyperdensity then a popular position at all, and for whom?
• The "iceberg homes" phenomenon (multiple below-ground floors in London's stressed market, Waldie 2013) shows hyperdensity achieved underground by the rich — is the basement the hyperdensity proposition's honest built form?
• Keil rejects both the hyper-density and low-density propositions. If neither pole "provides a sharp lens," what would a non-dichotomic urbanism measure instead — and can "density" be retained as one instrument among many, or must it be retired as the debate's organizing term?