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Publication Date: May 29th, 2025

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Hudson quietly got something right that most of America lost, or never had in the first place: "Gentle Density."

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The term, coined by urbanist Brent Toderian, refers to walkable, mixed-income neighborhoods built at a human scale. It includes what architect Daniel Parolek calls the "Missing Middle"— duplexes, fourplexes, townhouses, and courtyard apartments.

These housing types filled American towns before postwar zoning pushed them out, favoring car-based sprawl and social separation.

🙃 Put another way, "gentle density" is why Americans love visiting European towns and why Europeans do not visit American towns.

Today, Hudson still has the old pattern: narrow streets and alleys, diverse building types, and homes within walking distance of shops, schools, and transport. It looks more like a small European city than most of modern America. This quiet, compact urbanism is not nostalgia. It is a blueprint for the future. It is the wisdom of our ancestors.

But that future is at risk. If Mayor Kamal and his Planning Board approve multiple "high-rise public tower blocks," Hudson could repeat the worst mistakes of the 20th century. These tall, state-built apartments, called "projects" in the U.S., "council estates" in Britain, "HLM" in France, "Plattenbau" in Germany, isolate low-income residents, undermine local economies, and sever neighborhoods from public life. They were efficient on paper and disastrous in practice.

To oppose the return of "the projects" is not to be anti-housing. The data are clear: recipients of public support do far better in scatter-site or Missing Middle housing than in concentrated high-rise blocks. They benefit from safer streets, stronger social networks, and better life outcomes. But more on that in a future installment.

Hudson should not trade its greatest strength for a failed model and mayor. The Planning Board must resist top-down housing experiments and expand what already works: compact, diverse, and resilient neighborhoods. "Gentle Density" is not the past. It is the rare future Hudson already has.

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Last edited/updated:

May 29th, 2025.

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