An accessible reader offering case studies of innovative alternatives to expansionist urban housing This reader takes the following assumption as its basis: the ceaseless expansion of the urban periphery has been detrimental to not only urban populations but also the planet at large, corroding its most valuable and scarce resource, land. Housing proffers redensification as the corrective measure to the failing expansionist approach toward urban planning. Gathered here are case studies of alternative social housing projects from the past century—all of which incorporate methods of redensification. They span the Weißenhofsiedlung Estate (1927) to architectural experiments in suburban Mexico as recent as 2017. These alternative developments have offered solutions to countries experiencing intense population growth and provided sanctuary for those who have lost their homes in natural disasters. Altogether, the projects evince that the problem of urban housing is inextricably bound with the inception and progression of modernism.

Adrià collected case studies that add density, are typologically diverse, are transformable, and have other commendable aspects, but primarily their strategies had to be replicable. -- John Hill * World Architects *