The ecological virtues of densification between science, social geography and ideology

Urban planners commonly regard density and densification as ecologically virtuous. This essay challenges this consensus based on a review of the contemporary French debate. It contends that, beyond the corpus of scientific knowledge supporting densification, densification policies have an ideological dimension, and are entangled with specific socio-geographical dynamics. The argument unfolds in four sections. The first focuses on the ‘Newman and Kenworthy’ moment, putting the consensus for densification into historical perspective. The second section presents the critical turn of the 2010s, underlining the unequal social impacts of densification projects. Initially these critiques did not disqualify the idea that density is inherently desirable, but in France, by the end of the 2010s, it was increasingly called into question amid broader socio-geographical reconfigurations and shifting ideological alignments. As the third section hypothesizes, large urban centers are losing their advantage as spaces of emancipation. This, as the fourth section details, provides fertile ground for the resurgence of radical ecological critiques, positing densification as an ecological problem rather than a solution. Such critiques currently occupy a social and political niche, but this niche is likely to expand. Above all, these critiques may provide insights into how to render low-density urban areas more ecologically sustainable.