DENSE-CITY: Housing for Quality of Life and Social Capital is an exhibition of projects by Los Angeles architecture studio Brooks + Scarpa exploring urban development, cultural equity, and access to public space. Housing supply has been slow to meet the demands of the market or respond to the needs of increasingly varied living conditions. The exhibition features models, plans, visualizations, and drawings from two decades of projects addressing sustainable compact housing development and creation of affordable, vibrant, healthy communities through advocacy, innovation and building. 

DENSE-CITY is a way of thinking about how we live. Many factors that come together to shape the built environment: how a building faces the street, its height, its spaces within and circulation patterns. None has a larger impact on neighborhoods and cities as a whole than density. Traditionally measured by population figures, density at the neighborhood level is best characterized by how buildings, transport, and ultimately people are arranged on the street. Throughout Los Angeles, a critical look at density, both how it is measured and how it is formed, is needed to create positive growth in our communities.

The effects of increased housing costs continue to cripple urban areas throughout the country, with the supply of new, affordable housing failing to keep up with demand. In Los Angeles, new housing models are needed to create livable, dense communities addressing the region’s need for affordable housing. Understanding density and its relationship to the city will begin to inform these new housing models in a manner that is sensitive to the need to house increasing populations without displacing existing communities. Only by making connections between disparate elements and working towards designing cities as a comprehensive whole can sustainable approaches to affordable housing be created. 

Interdisciplinary approaches that combine practiced solutions with innovative methods are needed to address the increasingly challenging issues of housing development today. Illustrating the possibilities inherent within the existing urban fabric, DENSE-CITY invites communities to rethink their neighborhoods and policy makers to tailor existing zoning to new uses and new ways of living.