The difficulty of assembling sites large enough to redevelop at higher density can impede regeneration in city centers and accelerate suburban sprawl onto large sites already in single ownership. One promising new planning strategy to encourage voluntary land assembly is graduated density zoning, which allows higher density on larger sites. This strategy can increase the incentive for owners to cooperate in a land assembly that creates higher land values. Graduated density zoning will not eliminate the incentive to hold out, but it can create a new fear of being left out. Holdouts who are left with sites that cannot be combined with enough contiguous properties to trigger higher density lose a valuable economic opportunity. This article examines the difficulty of assembling land for infill development, and explains graduated density zoning as a way to encourage voluntary land assembly. Finally, it presents the results of graduated density zoning in practice.
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