Walk through Florence’s historic centre, and you’ll feel it immediately: the density is there, but not suffocating. Narrow streets. Shaded alleys. Buildings pressed shoulder to shoulder, but it never feels too close. There’s intimacy, but also openness. Ornament. Flow.

This is what urban closeness used to mean: green courtyards tucked behind heavy wooden doors, creating mystery and curiosity, shared loggias, ground floors that shift from shop to dwelling to atelier, often in the same building. Density wasn’t imposed. It emerged from life.

No one had to add “community features”. The community was the feature.

Of course, Florence isn’t perfect (they had their fair share of architectural egos). But their density came with creativity, restraint, and deep attention to material, scale, and light.

There’s a reason we still love it centuries later.

Read the full article on modern density and how today’s urban design does not work.

written by Helen M. Krauss