Origins[edit]
The term compact city was first coined in 1973 by George Dantzig and Thomas L. Saaty,[4] two mathematicians whose utopian vision was largely driven by a desire to see more efficient use of resources. The concept, as it has influenced urban planning, is often attributed to Jane Jacobs and her book The Death and Life of Great American Cities (1961),[1] a critique of modernist planning policies claimed by Jacobs to be destroying many existing inner-city communities.
Among other criticisms of the conventional planning and transport planning of the time, Jacobs' work attacked the tendency, inherited from the garden city movement, towards reducing the density of dwellings in urban areas. Four conditions were necessary to enable the diversity essential for urban renewal: mixed uses, small walkable blocks, mingling of building ages and types, and "a sufficiently dense concentration of people". The 'sufficient' density would vary according to local circumstances but, in general, a hundred dwellings per acre (247 per hectare – high by American standards, but quite common in European and Asian cities) could be considered a minimum.