Prioritizing compactness for a better quality of life: The case of U.S. cities.

Compact development is a common approach employed to achieve sustainable urban forms; however, whether compact development leads to a quality of life (QOL) improvement remains the question. Revealing this dynamic is essential in the United States, where compact development has been advocated to transform the nation's alleged unsustainable lifestyle. This paper applies cross-sectional and longitudinal regression to uncover (1) the relationship between compactness and QOL in forty-four U.S. cities, and (2) the effect of "compacting" on eight Urbanized Areas (UZAs). The finding is that the correlation between QOL and compactness is significantly positive when cities become more compact but significantly negative when they are overly compact. Furthermore, most UZAs have experienced a significant increase in QOL as they transition from sprawl to a more compact status. For cities experiencing sprawl, it is reasonable to support compact development given the objectives of increasing QOL; however, to prevent the negative impacts of "over-compactness," policies should be aimed at suitable compactness. The paper encourages city officials and planners to focus on local conditions. Professionals should reconsider how they design cities with regard to a high quality of life, rather than focusing exclusively on urban form policies. • Regression is used to study American cities' compactness and quality of life (QOL). • The correlation is positive when cities become compact, but negative as over compact. • The urban areas often increase in QOL as they transition from sprawl to more compact. • The cities experiencing sprawl should support compact development for QOL improvement. • Policy can be aimed at fitted compactness to prevent the impacts of over-compactness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]