[graeme]

Something that annoys me about these articles is that they're basically saying "the world's densest cities should make themselves denser"

Maybe we should just copy what those cities did. Imagine what america's GDP would be like if it had ten cities like the current NYC.

I live in one of the densest neighborhoods in north America, the plateau in Montreal. It achieves this density with low rise buildings, and it's a very pleasant area.

People say we should build taller buildings here. But I say we should build more plateaus elsewhere.

The problem is that our current regulatory environment makes it very difficult to build new versions of the world's most popular neighborhoods. So instead the call is to modify existing, successful neighborhoods.

[krschultz]

I think if you expand a low-rise city you end up with Washington DC or LA, meaning debilitating traffic. The density is not high enough to support mass transit effectively, but it's too high for effective roads.

[Jacqued]

As I said in response to another comment, you actually can. Paris has a density of 50000/sqmi (to compare with Manhattan's 70000) without high rise buildings.

What you can't have though, is large avenues and parking lots everywhere. Every inch of space than can be build has to be built.

[Tiktaalik]

Exactly. We don't necessarily need to build skyscrapers to achieve substantial density improvements. There are easier gains out there.

In Vancouver you have conflict over the height and density of new buildings, meanwhile South of the small downtown core there's 60 blocks of ultra low density detached single family houses. Even the small step of transitioning this to row houses or stacked townhouses would allow significant population increases.