OPINION
BY KIM TANZER
Since 2018, the City has put forward three versions of the same proposal—increasing density within residential neighborhoods—arguing that Gainesville needs increased density City-wide, including every existing neighborhood.
We have not, as a community, had the opportunity to discuss the underlying premise: How dense should Gainesville become?
First, a definition: Density describes the number of people living per square mile in a defined place, like a city, county, or state. Using Wikipedia to compare, the City of Gainesville has 2,226 people per square mile, similar to Orlando (2,774 people/square mile) or Austin Texas (3,006 people/square mile), but far less dense than London (14,500 people/square mile) or Hong Kong (17,614 people/ square mile).
Urbanists argue the virtues of increased density, and many of us can find examples to support this position: