ABSTRACT
Our demographic composition is changing dramatically. Technology is offering both new opportunities and new problems. The next several decades will see fundamental shifts in many aspects of the culture, the economy, and the physical environment. Since the early 1950s, Americans have viewed density as something like a four-letter word. This attitude might have had a rightful origin in previous patterns of urban development in which big cities were marked first by block after block of crowded tenements and later, by repetitive public housing complexes. Density now may be seen as positively correlated with a city's cultural and artistic status, not merely with its financial stature. It is clear that close-in districts are once again welcoming people from countries and cultures all over the world as they have done in the past. We are rediscovering not only the virtues of density, but of diversity as well.
