Built in 1970, Penn’s Landing Square in Philadelphia offered a modern twist on traditional rowhouse living, packing a maze of units into a single city block.
Photo courtesy Louis Sauer
Lessons from a Modern Master of Low-Rise Housing
Cities looking to boost density and affordability should look to the work of architect Louis Sauer, who designed stylish modernist housing in the 1960s and ’70s.
To an onlooker, population density can be counterintuitive.
The thumbnail image for American density will always be the towers of Manhattan — and that’s not exactly wrong — but many of the densest municipalities in the U.S. boast less impressive skylines: Look across the Hudson to New Jersey towns like West New York, Guttenberg and Hoboken. Huntington Park in California and Somerville in Massachusetts manage to pack in more people per square mile than high-rise-laden cities like San Francisco and Boston, though few buildings rise beyond four stories.