Density: Friend or Foe?

Building in Cleveland near RAPID station, 2017

The New York Times had a piece yesterday in their Business section about the questionable future of transit-oriented development (TOD) projects in urban areas. "Square Feet" columnist Kevin Williams wrote: 

[S]ome developers worry that the coronavirus pandemic will stop the momentum as social distancing and telecommuting become the norm.... "I wouldn't make any big development decisions right now," said Dr. [Richard J.] Jackson [Fielding School of Public Health at UCLA, who has studied transit and development and epidemics!]. The economic fallout is likely to last five years or more, he added, and people may be wearing masks for several years. (Williams 2020)

Meanwhile, Maryland developer Bob Youngentob is looking strongly at switching genres from apartments to townhomes.

"The forced interaction of sharing doors and elevators has caused some anxiety," Mr. Youngentob said. "Townhomes, where you come in and out of your door, and you know you are the only one touching your door handle, provide some comfort." (Williams 2020) 

Most people quoted by Williams in his column are nonetheless optimistic about the future of TOD, reasoning that cost, commuting, and the long-term desire to be close to amenities will keep that type of development attractive.

Your humble blogger and his humble son, Greenwich Village, 2010

Other observers are not so sanguine. Axios cites a Harris Poll last month that found 39 percent of urban dwellers considering a move to a less densely-populated area in the wake of the COVID-19 outbreak, with those aged 18-34 particularly so inclined. Harris Poll CEO John Gurzema: "Already beset by high rents and clogged streets, the virus is now forcing urbanites to consider social distancing as a lifestyle" (Hart 2020; for a human-interest version, see Hughes 2020). Another survey, by IBM's Institute for Business Value, found 17 percent of respondents expecting to use their personal cars more in the future, and 48 percent reducing or eliminating use of shared transportation like buses or ride-share. (Brasuell 2020: Nearly half of those are swearing off the stuff completely.)

However we feel about the shutdown, we seem to be learning that contact with other people increases the likelihood of getting this weird new disease that causes a confusing variety of symptoms ranging from nothing-you-would-notice all the way up to slow agonizing death. (And some of the more dangerous symptoms are easily overlooked: see Wei-Haas 2020.) So everything that drew us to cities--economic clustering, endless varieties of people, the cultural smorgasbord, third places, living car free--is potentially fatal. "New York is far more crowded than any other major city in the United States," reported The New York Times in March. "All of those people, in such a small space, appear to have helped the virus spread rapidly through packed subway trains, busy playgrounds and hivelike apartment buildings, forming ever-widening circles of infections and making New York the nation's epicenter of the outbreak" (Rosenthal 2020).

"Density is really an enemy in a situation like this," said Dr. Steven Goodman, an epidemiologist at Stanford University. "With large population centers, where people are interacting with more people all the time, that's where it's going to spread the fastest."

Or, as my son used to say: "Grab your pills and head for the hills!"

Vancouver is dense but relatively unscathed (Source: Wikimedia commons)

Others question whether density is truly the causal factor in the spread of the coronavirus. "Density has been a factor in this pandemic," notes author Richard Florida, "as it has been in previous ones.... Yet, density is likely just one of a number of key factors that determine how vulnerable places are to the virus" (Florida 2020). New York City's density is distinctive in the United States, but not in East Asia, where a number of cities have had far lower rates of infection and death from COVID (Fox 2020). So has Vancouver, one of the first cities in Canada to record a COVID infection, and one of that country's densest, on par with neighbors Seattle and Portland. Like Washington and Oregon, British Columbia was quick to impose travel restrictions and social distancing policies; Canada's more comprehensive national health system may also have played a helpful role (Cortright 2020), while the American administration is actively undermining health insurance coverage. 

Part of the confusion is an ecological fallacy (fancy social science term) that the population density of a city or metropolitan area is an indicator of the lives of each individual inhabitant. Because cities don't catch viruses, individuals do; people exist in their own bodies, not in geographic delineations. Even in less densely populated metros like in the U.S. South people still have to take their bodies to places that are often crowded. Moreover, sprawl has its own social as well as financial costs, both of which affect our capacity to respond in a pandemic. 

In general, it is the metropolitan areas of the South that have the lowest population densities. Does this make them safer in a pandemic? Well, it does give more room for the dog to run around, but beyond that it seems like there are diminishing returns to so much land. Once you've got some private outdoor space, a building entrance you don't have to share with others and your very own laundry room... added space doesn't really gain you much protection from infectious disease unless you're capable of growing all the food and toilet paper you need on site. Closer-together houses also make it easier to check up on neighbors who might need help, plus the high cost of maintaining basic infrastructure for sprawling suburbs can cut into local government budgets for emergency services, public health efforts and the like. (Fox 2020) 

It's not the density of your metro, it's the lifestyle you are able to have within that density. Florida again:

[P]laces can be dense and still provide places for people to isolate and be socially distant. Simply put, there is a huge difference between rich dense places, where people can shelter in place, work remotely, and have all of their food and other needs delivered to them, and poor dense places, which push people out onto the streets, into stores and onto crowded transit with one another. (Florida 2020)

Better, at least from a susceptibility standpoint, to be an attorney or college professor in the Borough of Manhattan than a nurse or meatpacker in Denison, Iowa.

Jane Jacobs (Source: boweryboyshistory.com)

Florida's attention to "the kind of density" in a particular area reflects Jane Jacobs's distinction between good and bad density. Chapter 11 of The Death and Life of Great American Cities (Modern Library, [1961] 2011) is a thorough and very-much-still-relevant examination of the phenomenon of population density. A "sufficiently dense concentration of people" is one of four "indispensable" conditions for successful street life; the others are multiplicity of uses, short blocks, and a mix of building types. None is sufficient without the others (pp. 196-197). So, 

What are proper densities for city dwellings? The answer to this is something like the answer Lincoln gave to the question, "How long should a man's legs be?" Long enough to reach the ground, Lincoln said. Just so, proper city dwelling densities are a matter of performance... Densities are too low, or too high, when they frustrate city diversity instead of abetting it. (p. 272)

There is a lot of ideas packed into this chapter, but three seem particularly relevant.

1. There's no magic number or range of population density--nor of her preferred metric, dwellings per acre. You need a certain level of density "to do a good primary-diversity job of helping to generate flourishing secondary city diversity and liveliness" (p. 276) that features round-the-clock walkability, street life, and thriving local businesses. Too little density fails to support these features, and so does too much density. "The reason dwelling densities can begin repressing diversity if they get too high is this: At some point, to accommodate so many dwellings on the land, standardization of the buildings must set in. This is fatal..." (p. 277).
2. Density (on the district level) should not be confused with overcrowding (on the residence level). She blames the Progressive Era Garden City reformers for equating the two: "They hated both equally, in any case, and coupled them like ham and eggs..." (p. 268). You can have urban density without packing too many people into too few rooms, and there are plenty of examples of each without the other. Urban renewal tended to exacerbate overcrowding even as it reduced density (pp. 269-270). Overcrowding without density "may be even more depressing and destructive" because residents lack the vibe and diversity that come with good density. The best urban areas are where "Diversity and its attractions are combined with tolerable living conditions in the case of enough dwellings for enough people, and so more people who develop choice are apt to stay put" (p. 271).
3. A development of high-rise apartments, modeled after LeCorbusier's towers in the park, get you density in a hurry but without street life, and with a monotony of building style that represses diversity. The key is to mix building types: "The more variations there can be, the better. As soon as the range and number of variations in buildings decline, the diversity of population and enterprises is too apt to stay static or decline, instead of increasing" (p. 279). Charles Marohn of Strong Towns often talks about the long-term problems when areas are built all at once to a finished state, but there can be short-term bad effects, too.

Density done wrong: Robert Taylor Homes, Chicago (Source: Wikimedia commons)

Density done right supports a diversity of people doing diverse things at diverse times of the day. It's comfortable, and prosperous, and safe. It provides services, places to walk, choices, neighbors, and economic and cultural vitality (Alter 2020, Schaller 2020).  Prosperous places might be more attractive to viruses, terrorists, and pickpockets, but they can also provide the essential services and social networks and financial resilience to see us through times of trouble. Density done wrong is uncomfortable and life there is difficult, even in the best of times. In emergency situations, you're on your own. Like the meatpackers ordered to work in unsafe conditions, or health care workers without adequate equipment, or the legions of newly unemployed, no one has your back. But we should not confuse ghettos with density done right.

The debate over population density and its future is partly ideological. In her conclusion to the chapter on density, Jane Jacobs characteristically hits the nail on the head:

People gathered in concentrations of big-city size and density can be felt to be an automatic--if necessary--evil. This is a common assumption: that human beings are charming in small numbers and noxious in large numbers. Given this point of view, it follows that concentrations of people should be physically minimized in every way: by thinning down the numbers themselves insofar as this is possible, and beyond that by aiming at illusions of suburban lawns and small-town placidity. It follows that the exuberant variety inherent in great numbers of people, tightly concentrated, should be played down, hidden, hammered into a semblance of the thinner, more tractable variety or the outright homogeneity often represented in thinner populations. It follows that these confusing creatures--so many people gathered together--should be sorted out and stashed away as decently and quietly as possible, like chickens on a modern egg-factory farm.

On the other hand, people gathered in concentrations of city size and density can be considered a positive good, in the faith that they are desirable because they are the source of immense vitality, and because they do represent, in small geographic compass, a great and exuberant richness of differences and possibilities, many of these differences unique and unpredictable and all the more valuable because they are. Given this point of view, it follows that the presence of great numbers of people gathered together in cities should not only be frankly accepted as a physical fact. It follows that they should also be enjoyed as an asset and their presence celebrated: by raising their concentrations where it is needful for flourishing city life, and beyond that by aiming for a visibly lively public street life and for accommodating and encouraging, economically and visually, as much variety as possible. (pp. 287-288) 

People like President Trump who see cities as hopeless sewers of crime and filth naturally associate concentration with contagion. Urbanists who see cities as the (sustainable) engines of economic and cultural development will continue to see their advantages outweighing their vulnerabilities. But are there enough of us out there to sustain urbanism?

Edge of town, 2013: back to the future?

P.S. If people decide based on the pandemic to decamp en masse for the suburbs, it won't be everyone. Just like in the 1950s and 1960s, the people who leave cities will be the people who can afford to. If there's one thing about America that the pandemic has exposed, it's how badly we serve our most vulnerable citizens: the poor, people of color, and those with health conditions. Rather than grabbing our pills and heading for the hills, we're better off designing cities that work for everyone.

EARLIER POST: "Pandemics and Our Common Life," 18 March 2020

SEE ALSO:

Lloyd Alter, "Urban Density is Not the Enemy, It Is Your Friend," Treehugger, 25 March 2020

Joe Cortright, "Density is not Destiny: Covid in Cascadia," City Observatory, 20 April 2020

Justin Fox, "Density Isn't Destiny in the Fight Against COVID-19," Bloomberg Opinion, 7 April 2020

Kim Hart, "Coronavirus May Prompt Migration out of American Cities," Axios, 30 April 2020

Brian M. Rosenthal, "Density is New York City's Big Enemy in the Coronavirus Fight," New York Times, 23 March 2020
Bruce Schaller, "Density Isn't Easy, But It's Necessary," City Lab, 4 May 2020

Kevin Williams, "Rethinking the Blueprint for Denser Living," New York Times, 6 May 2020, B7

We'll be back! Non-distanced Bike to Work Week breakfast at Jimmy Z's, May 2019