Desired physical form of cities has been noticeable since the beginning of urbanization, from old patterns of early civilizations to the latest urbanism’s theories, which offered to build better cities. The opinions in recent decades have expressed that compact physical form of cities is a better form than sprawl form to achieve urban sustainability. The form of the city is the embodiment of it...

The ‘compact city’ agenda has become commonplace and is often presented as an urban ‘good’ in mainstream research, policy, practice. Haarstad et al.'s intervention aims to bring critical geographical research this debate, a very welcome one. In response, I reflect on the debates compact city, consider its links high density urbanisms, present some questions for taking debate forward.

Growth of urban areas and abandonment of rural areas are phenomena that increase quickly. The main consequences of urbanization are pollution, consumption of resources and energy, waste dumps, and junk yards. These aspects require a better planning and design of European urban metropolitan areas, considering benefits, opportunities, costs and risks (B.O.C.R.), derivable by urban transformations...

Urbanization causes severe environmental degradation and continues to increase in scale and intensity around the world, but little is known about how we should design cities to minimize their ecological impact. With a sprawling style of urban development, low intensity impact is spread across a wide area, and with a compact form of development intense impact is concentrated over a small area; i...