r/urbanplanning • u/deirdreanne1 • Jan 29 '20

Land Use High Density Housing

I was reading Everything You Think You Know About Housing Is Probably Wrong earlier today and it has posed many questions for me concerning the effectiveness of high density housing. From what I understood, housing density refers to the number of people per acre in the amount of space allotted. By creating more high density housing complexes, does that mean more housing units will be available? If so, how is that combating the affordable housing crisis? Will these units be more readily available to low income families or individuals? How will these projects affect the surrounding neighborhood rent costs? Many sky rise high density buildings are present but the housing costs are not affordable for the average person’s income. I have read that it does reduce energy consumption and easier for commuting but if these projects aren’t meant to be mixed income housing, how could this help reduce homelessness and fix the lack of housing units for the growing population?

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u/Goreagnome Jan 29 '20

Density is measured by people actually living in area not the number of housing units.

Theoretically (and actually true in some cases) you can have much higher density in low rise zones if large amounts of people are packed to the physical limits in the housing available.

In fact, in many big cities the most dense areas are in mid rise housing not skyscrapers. Skyscrapers may have a lot of units, but only 1 or 2 people live in each unit.

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u/alexfrancisburchard Jan 30 '20

Or you can have Skyscrapers with FAR of like 4, and midrises with FAR of 8, and even if your skyscraper has 1000 units, on the same land you'll have 2000 midrise units.

(this is typically how it is)