The intent of this book is threefold: (1) to summarize recent research
concerned with residential crowding, (2) to present some new perspec-
tives on this important subject, and (3) to consider design implications
and recommendations that can be derived from the existing body of
research. We have sought to bring together the work of many of the
researchers most involved in these areas, and have asked them to go
beyond their data-to present new insights into response to residential
crowding and to speculate about the meaning of their work for the
present and future design of residential environments. We feel that this
endeavor has been successful, and that the present volume will help to
advance our understanding of these issues. The study of residential
density is not new. Studies in this area were conducted by sociologists
as early as the 1920s, yielding moderate corre- lational relationships
between census tract density and various social and physical
pathologies. This work, however, has been heavily criticized because it
did not adequately consider confounding social structural factors, such
as social class and ethnicity. The research that will be presented in
the present volume represents a new generation of crowding
investigation. All of the work has been conducted during the 1970s, and
a range of methodological strategies have been employed in these
studies.
