The Footprint of Tight: Hinterlands, Landscape and Dense Cities

The Supertight refers to the small, intense, robust and hyper-condensed spaces that emerge as a by-product of extreme levels of urban density. These ideas were explored through a site-specific architectural installation and curated exhibition that was held in Melbourne in 2019 and drew on contributions from practitioners throughout Asia to explore the role of design in negotiating and expressing density in urban environments. The project explored the term ‘Tight’ as a positive and more nuanced approached to thinking about urban density. If the Supertight is focused on cities, its consequence is equally on the landscapes that support cities. While we as architects focus on the object of density, the centre of cities – their organisation, occupation and formal characteristics, we often overlook the vast hinterland that supports dense urban cores. Cities such as Singapore and Hong Kong, which were explored heavily through the exhibition and are in many ways models of the physical and social management of extreme density, are equally exemplars of cities that rely heavily on supply chains that stretch well beyond their borders. This paper will build upon discussions emerging from the Supertight exhibition and will critically reflect upon and document the relationship between dense urban cores and the broader networks that support their existence. While urban density and compact cities are generally understood to be more sustainable than sprawl, to what extent does the close settlement of cities result in an expansion of terrain and resources to support them? Do dense cities require more to enable their existence, and how does behaviour and patterns of consumption impact that potential for density to be sustainable? The paper will explore how productive landscapes that support dense cities be absorbed within dense urban cores, and what would need to shift to enable this.