Definition
Urban density is a concept used in city planning, urban studies, and related fields to describe the intensity of people, jobs, housing units, total floor area of buildings, or some other measure of human occupation, activity, and development across a defined unit of area. In general terms, urban density describes the degree of concentration or compactness of people or development in a city.
Description
The density of cities is relevant to a broad range of issues related to the quality of urban life including “environmental quality, transportation systems, physical infrastructure and urban form, social factors, and economic factors” (Churchman, 1999, p. 398). As such, urban density is a major preoccupation of urban planning. Modern zoningsystems developed in the early twentieth century were partly intended to limit congestion, the shadowing of streets, and other adverse effects of very dense buildings and...
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Hess, P. (2014). Density, Urban. In: Michalos, A.C. (eds) Encyclopedia of Quality of Life and Well-Being Research. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-0753-5_698
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-0753-5_698
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