Urban Densification: Policy Input or Market Output?

I live in the inner city Brisbane suburb of West End. Over the past few years, my understanding of how our neighbourhood is changing has been shaped largely through working alongside — and learning from — urban and town planners in community advocacy settings.

Much of what I’ve come to understand about the regulation of space comes from that education: taller buildings, narrower gaps, wind tunnelling, and a steady erosion of green relief. These changes are often framed in the language of “good or bad planning”: density near transport, compact cities, and efficient use of land.

Recently, I’ve been reading Order without Design, and it has unsettled how I think about all of this. A quick aside: the author also gives a notable shout-out to Laura Fox — a fellow NYU alum, a friend, and an urbanist whose reading eye I trust. Seeing her acknowledged as a fabulous editor and reviewer gave me a small jolt of small-world recognition as I moved deeper into the book’s arguments.

The book cuts sharply at the planning profession — not in a dismissive way, but in a precise, economic one. Its central argument is that density is not a goal pursued by developers; it is a response to price.

Land prices emerge from the interaction of income and transport costs — of firms and workers — with each exerting pressure differently and shifting as economic conditions and urban form change over time. Developers respond to those prices. They don’t necessarily create them, and they don’t necessarily densify out of a commitment to compact cities.

This framing has been difficult to unsee.

Density follows prices, not intentions

In the planning discourse, density is often treated as an outcome of good design or regulatory foresight. In economic terms, it is something closer to a signal. High land prices force intensity of available land. Where prices are low, buildings spread out. Where prices are high, they stack up.

From this perspective, density is not evidence of success or failure in itself — it is a symptom.

In places like West End, development intensity is not happening because developers want density. It is happening because land prices and availability make anything else unviable. The form follows the economics.

Brisbane’s monocentric reality

Brisbane remains a largely monocentric city. Jobs, institutions, and income are still heavily concentrated in and around the CBD. That matters.

The Brisbane City Council often justifies increased inner city density by pointing to proximity to transport — particularly train stations. But those stations overwhelmingly serve inbound trips to the CBD.

In that sense, “density near transport” can feel like a red herring. The proximity that really matters is not to a station, but to the CBD itself. The transport system reinforces monocentricity rather than dissolving it, so the underlying transport cost — especially time — remains largely unchanged.

If transport costs don’t meaningfully fall, then higher density is not alleviating pressure; it is simply accommodating it.

Amenity as an unpriced cost

As density increases, local amenity changes. Green space per resident declines. Buildings create wind tunnels and heat traps. Informal social spaces shrink or disappear. These effects are not accidental — they are the consequence of squeezing more activity onto scarce land.

From an economic point of view, these are externalities. They are real costs, but they are weakly priced or not priced at all. As a result, they are weakly defended.

Developers don’t remove green space out of malice. They respond to land values and planning envelopes. If amenity is not embedded in the price system or enforced through binding requirements, it is inevitably eroded.

The uncomfortable question of prices

One question the book leaves me sitting with is this: what has happened to prices in newly densified areas in West End?

If density is occurring, the theory suggests prices are high. But is that because density has been allowed — or because density is constrained elsewhere? If large parts of the city are effectively protected from intensification, then price pressure must concentrate where development is permitted.

In that case, density in places like West End is not a sign of market excess; it is the market working through a narrow regulatory funnel.

Where does this leave community advocacy?

This is where I find myself uncertain.

As community groups, we advocate for green space, social infrastructure, shade, schools, and places to gather. These are legitimate needs. But if density is fundamentally a market response to price — not a planning preference — then advocacy that focuses only on building form risks missing the deeper drivers.

If transport costs remain high, if employment remains concentrated, and if land supply is selectively constrained, then density will continue to rise where it is allowed — regardless of how fiercely communities contest it.

The harder question may be whether communities need to engage less with the aesthetics of density and more with the economics that produce it: transport networks that genuinely reduce time costs, land value capture to fund social infrastructure, and planning systems that recognise amenity as something that must be protected before prices do the damage.

I don’t yet know where this line of thinking leads. But Order without Design has made one thing clear: density is not the disease we are trying to cure. It is the symptom of something deeper — and until we name that clearly, we will keep arguing about shadows on the wall.