Why urban densification ignores the social dimension of sustainability

The business of densification refers to more or less aggressive urban development practices that use the broad political consensus on the need for urban densification to promote profit-driven development, often dressed up in the rhetoric of eco-efficiency, and to the detriment of social policy objectives (e.g. affordable housing, cultural heritage, community cohesion). The implementation of urban densification requires deep changes in the practice of land-use planning because, as opposed to greenfield developments, it occurs in a complex web of established rights and interests. These more active forms of planning interventions are referred to as “land policy” in a growing body of literature (including in this special issue). In the context of densification, land policy tends to be appraised in planning debates as purely instrumental, that is, as a more effective and proactive administrative strategy for improved project implementation. In this commentary, relying on empirical data from the Netherlands and Switzerland, we argue that land policy is in fact a hybrid construct that merges both progressive and neoliberal elements. We discuss how the hybrid nature of land policy generates tensions in project implementation as different discourses and representations collide. Therefore, there is a real need to accurately assess the true ideological scope of urban changes implemented in the name of densification, as land policy is fundamentally value-loaded. If planners remain blind to the political dimension of land policy, the business of densification will flourish, and social sustainability objectives will be systematically relegated to the background.