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Innerfeld is currently working with public officials and community groups in Oakland, Pasadena, Hanford, Chicago and other cities to stimulate more community green projects.

Going by the numbers

"People who scream that something is too dense have to define their terms," says Stuart Meck, FAICP, the principal investigator for APA's Growing Smart^SM project. "There's net density, which includes only the privately owned part of the site, and gross density, which includes publicly owned streets and so on.

"Sometimes," he adds, "comprehensive plans aren't clear about which term they mean." In Meck's view, "net density is a more accurate way of characterizing development." It's also the standard recommended for a land-use element in the Growing Smart Legislative Guidebook. "That's to keep the plan consistent with the zoning ordinance, which regulates both private and public land," he says.

As to the larger question of how much density is just right, Meck says, "Growing Smart is neutral on this point. It is one of those things for which there is no right answer, although the guidebook gives you plenty of tools—including density bonuses, urban growth areas, and transfer of development rights—that allow you to have compact development if that's what you want."

The guidebook does, however, explain how to measure density. That's in the section on calculating the amount of land that goes into urban growth areas. "Urban growth areas establish a minimum density that must be achieved over time," says Meck. "That means that all new development has to be above such and such a figure. Or you can say that, on average, development has to be of this density."

Meck suggests that most of the hysterical reactions to density are caused by simple ignorance of the meaning of the term. "I think people have no idea of what is high, medium, and low density," he says. "They hear four units an acre, and they say that's high density. And I say baloney. That's a density at which you find single-family homes."



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