Compact City as a Model Achieving Sustainable Development

There is not a common definition of compact city in literature, indeed this concept is one of the most discussed in contemporary urban policy. Nevertheless, the compact city model is expected to improve cities’ environmental, social, and economic performance, by influencing the use of space and by integrating different urban policies. The compact city definition can be structured with reference to the following approaches: “to increase built area and residential population densities; to intensify urban economic, social and cultural activities and to manipulate urban size, form and structure and settlement systems in pursuit of the environmental, social and global sustainability benefits derived from the concentration of urban functions” (Burgess 2000, pp. 9–10). The 2012 OECD Report on Compact City Policies gives a synthetic definition of the compact city as a “Spatial urban form characterized by ‘compactness’” and with some “key characteristics as: (i) dense and proximate development patterns; (ii) urban areas linked by public transport systems; and (iii) accessibility to local services and jobs” (OECD 2012, p. 26). Therefore, the compact city concept in the framework of sustainable development does not only mean to enhance urban density but rather to combine the quantitative concept of density within other goals and requirements aiming to undertake high levels of economic viability, environmental quality, social equity in the urban environment.