Abstract
Compact urban form has been widely suggested as a more sustainable development pattern that enhances different aspects of social liveability such as social exchange, collective interaction, and outdoor activity. Empirical research, however, challenges proposing a generic and universal understanding of compactness and its social advantages: compactness is perceived and lived differently in different socio-cultural contexts. This paper contributes to the call for gaining a more place-specific understanding from the compact urban form. To do so, it examines the social life of compact neighbourhoods in two study sites in Berlin. Social life is investigated by measuring the two dimensions of “neighbouring” and “social activities”: while the former explores how residents of the neighbourhood perceive different aspects of social life, the latter maps how urban space accommodates different types of social activity. Questionnaires and advanced mapping techniques are the primary sources of research obtained through intensive fieldwork and on-site observation. The research findings challenge some dominant assumptions attributed to the compact urban form orthodoxy: a compact neighbourhood can be perceived as safe, offer acceptable home and neighbourhood satisfaction, and, at the same time, suffer from low social networking and community engagement.
Highlights
It has been widely argued that higher densities and compact urban form are more sustainable than other urban patterns [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8]
The aim of the paper is bringing some insights into the social dimension of compact neighbourhoods from two neighbourhoods in Berlin
This was a response to the call for more place-specific evidence from different cities with regard to the social life in compact neighbourhoods
Summary
It has been widely argued that higher densities and compact urban form are more sustainable than other urban patterns [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8]. The growing scholastic attention to the environmental and social advantages of compact cities has convinced policy-makers across the globe to integrate densification schemes into their planning and development policies [4,39], such as the Green Paper on the Urban Environment (1990), the European Spatial Development Perspective (1999), and the Leipzig Charter on Sustainable European Cities (signed in 2007), to name but a few. The critique is that there is no one-size-fits-all solution [47], so more scientific investigations and empirical evidence are needed from across the globe to gain a fine-tuned understanding from the social implications of compact urban form on the one hand, and to develop more place-specific development policies for different communities [48,49,50].
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