Post-Suburban Densification

Definition

Post-suburban densification names the contested wave of planning whose object is the urbanization of the suburbs through density — the field Eric Charmes and Roger Keil theorize as "the politics of post-suburban densification in Canada and France" (2015, the symposium Keil's article draws on). Its target is the "density prerogative": the "rarely questioned normative objective" by which higher density is enjoyed "much [as a] love in urbanist circles," seen as "a necessary precondition for sustainability and even resilience" — "the mantra of central city-based urban environmental policies ostensibly geared towards a twenty-first century urbanity" (Keil 2015, p. 583). The concept's analytic core is threefold (Charmes and Keil, quoted p. 588): (1) the politics of densification — "Densification is not neutral but it is contested across various political camps. The environmental arguments in favour of densification are often plastic and dependent on the speaker's interest and subject position"; smart growth and New Urbanism "have now become de rigueur in development discourse as land developers, builders and local political elites sell growth (and their ambitious plans) with a green strategy." (2) Morphology matters — "density per se does not say much about urban form. There is a wide variety of ways by which to achieve similar types of density." (3) Existing suburban densification regimes are not all the same — "Both physical landscape and socio-political governance present a wide spectrum. Class, and other social status differences are important in this context."

The concept's demand, against the "normative debate on urban density" that is "relatively uninformed of the complex 'urban political ecologies'… that sustain it" (p. 587), is procedural and substantive at once: "the densification of the larger metropolitan region must be a democratic and differentiated affair that defies the stereotypes used in much public debate and planning discourse" (p. 589) — and it must respect Keil and Hertel's rule that "any attempt to reform or regenerate the suburbs must come from the suburban populations and their democratic institutions themselves and cannot be prescribed and implemented through centrally-led, top-down processes" (p. 583).

This page requires fuller treatment — created at the Keil ingest; the comparative France-Canada symposium (Charmes & Keil; Filion; Poppe & Young; Rousseau; Touati-Morel) awaits its own treatment.

Key Thinkers

• Roger Keil — with Eric Charmes, the concept's author: the three-angle critique of the density prerogative (2015)
• Eric Charmes (not yet paged — see log) — co-author of the comparative IJURR symposium on intensification in French and Canadian suburbs (2015)
• Peter Marcuse (not yet paged — see log) — the founding audit: density's meaning "directly related to social differentiation… varying directly by class, race and gender"; "Planning for density without considering class, race and gender is likely to produce proposals biased in favor of business uses and upper-income classes against the poor and working classes" (1993, quoted pp. 588–589)
• Amélie Touati-Morel (not yet paged — see log) — the Paris case: "'hard' and 'soft' densification policies in the Paris city region that reflect the different socio-spatialities and variable densities of municipalities there" (quoted p. 590)
• Fran Tonkiss (not yet paged — see log) — the global-perspective damper: density debates "increasingly irrelevant, for the majority urban experience" (2013, quoted p. 583)

Related Concepts

• towers-in-the-park — the inherited density form now written into the densification wave
• hyperdensity — the contemporary hyperdensification remedy the concept critiques
• real-existing-suburbia — the diversity the densification debate must engage rather than flatten
• urban-sprawl — the counter-pole whose critique the density prerogative extends ("sprawl repair")
• suburban-governance — the governance modality through which densification regimes differ
• sustainability — the normative banner under which densification sells growth

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 density enigmas (pp. 584–586); the three assumptions (pp. 587–588); the Charmes-Keil three angles (p. 588); Marcuse's three observations (pp. 588–589); the democratic-differentiated conclusion (pp. 589)
• Designing a Place Called Home (Wentling 2017) — the production thesis: suburban densification as the market's discovered form — "in new suburban communities the trend is moving toward higher density housing… in favor of mixed-density, mixed-use walkable communities with access to open space and other amenities and services" (p. 251); the multifamily future ("Mixed-income communities, with mixed-density and perhaps even mixed-use buildings, will become increasingly popular as traveling and transportation become more expensive and time-consuming," p. 219); the walk-up datum (27.8 units/acre ≈ urban high-rise fabric's 26.7, p. 243); and the regulatory condition — Missing Middle legalization (duplexes to three-story wood-frame apartments plus accessory units) as the measure that makes the densification buildable and affordable (p. 252; see missing-middle-housing). Where Keil's enigmas pose density's politics, Wentling names the form the market actually seeks at the edge — moderate density, mixed tenure, walkable (see towers-in-the-park, post-suburbia, new-urbanism).
• The New London Vernacular (Callister 2026) — the design-politics register: the "loose grid" as the urban type where densification is won or lost — suburban London's "sensitive intensification" family (villa blocks, mansion-block forms, mews, gentle density at nodes, p. 15) against the crash-in default ("a mini-Georgian apartment block dropped into" a quiet semi-detached street, p. 14); the acceptance rule — "density can grow out of the place rather than crash into it" (p. 15); and the future-character addendum: context "also means what the place is becoming," so "'it is out of character' is not always a good planning argument" (p. 32). Callister's is the morphology answer to the three-angle critique: density per se says little about urban form — the form is the argument that wins consent. See densification, london-urban-types, new-london-vernacular.

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

• If "density per se does not say much about urban form," what does the design-relevant variable become — morphology, governance, tenure, or the "class and other social status differences" the third angle names?
• The article's scenario "where millions of newcomers are yet to arrive in an already densely populated urban region over the next generation" (p. 589) makes densification unavoidable — what would densification that "defies the stereotypes" process look like, beyond the demand that it be "democratic and differentiated"?
• Touati-Morel's "hard" and "soft" densification policies in the Paris region reflect "the different socio-spatialities and variable densities of municipalities there" (p. 590) — is the hard/soft distinction a general typology of densification politics or a Paris artifact?