Pretty much everyone I know in London have moved here willingly, and like it here. I no, I'm not suggesting making it more crowded. I'm suggesting making it denser.
They're not the same.
Taking the current structure of my street and moving in 5 times more people would be a disaster. It'd be tiny little flats and bedsits, no space for parking. Endless queues.
Compressing my street into 1000m^2 of highrise would be a very different matter, and would let you increase density 5-times (so 5,000m^2 of highrises) near the end of the road closest to the rail station and bus station, and you'd still be left with 40,000 square metres of free land for e.g. extra parks and other amenities.
I don't think that'd be more crowded at all - on the contrary. Most work journeys would be drastically simplified and shortened. Far fewer people would need to depend on cars. Dense residential towers close to major transport interchanges could free up massive amount of road capacity, and outright remove the need for many roads even while pushing overall city density up towards Macau levels.
A lot of crowding is created by bad planning that lengthen journeys and force people to take routes that are already busy.
E.g. 15 years ago or so I lived at Marble Arch. I walked Oxford Street to Holborn where I worked every morning. It was relaxing and quiet in the morning. Then the Central Line derailed and there were repair works for weeks. Of course this was not a result of bad planning, but an accident, but it is a good example of the level of impact available transit options has: Suddenly it was as crowded in the morning as during the afternoon/evening shopping rush. (Lack of) crowding is as much a function of well planned transit as it is a function of density.
Plan a city right, and build dense, well located, housing within easy reach of high capacity transport, and it doesn't need to feel very crowded, because the feeling of it being crowded is not down to how many people that are near you, but how many people you can see and hear immediately surrounding you. Reducing the unnecessary roads, and freeing up space for leisure activities that spread people out (e.g. parks) can often reduce the feeling of being in a crowd even if the actual residential space is incredibly compact.
They're not the same.
Taking the current structure of my street and moving in 5 times more people would be a disaster. It'd be tiny little flats and bedsits, no space for parking. Endless queues.
Compressing my street into 1000m^2 of highrise would be a very different matter, and would let you increase density 5-times (so 5,000m^2 of highrises) near the end of the road closest to the rail station and bus station, and you'd still be left with 40,000 square metres of free land for e.g. extra parks and other amenities.
I don't think that'd be more crowded at all - on the contrary. Most work journeys would be drastically simplified and shortened. Far fewer people would need to depend on cars. Dense residential towers close to major transport interchanges could free up massive amount of road capacity, and outright remove the need for many roads even while pushing overall city density up towards Macau levels.
A lot of crowding is created by bad planning that lengthen journeys and force people to take routes that are already busy.
E.g. 15 years ago or so I lived at Marble Arch. I walked Oxford Street to Holborn where I worked every morning. It was relaxing and quiet in the morning. Then the Central Line derailed and there were repair works for weeks. Of course this was not a result of bad planning, but an accident, but it is a good example of the level of impact available transit options has: Suddenly it was as crowded in the morning as during the afternoon/evening shopping rush. (Lack of) crowding is as much a function of well planned transit as it is a function of density.
Plan a city right, and build dense, well located, housing within easy reach of high capacity transport, and it doesn't need to feel very crowded, because the feeling of it being crowded is not down to how many people that are near you, but how many people you can see and hear immediately surrounding you. Reducing the unnecessary roads, and freeing up space for leisure activities that spread people out (e.g. parks) can often reduce the feeling of being in a crowd even if the actual residential space is incredibly compact.