In the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries European cities experienced a wave of New Tenement construction – dense residential multi-storey buildings in the inner cities. The design of these buildings was often inspired by nineteenth-century tenements. It came with the conviction that in contrast to modernist developments dense tenement neighbourhoods create cohesive communities, civic engagement and a democratic polity.

This paper will analyse this discourse with the example of two neighbourhoods that were built at the turn of the twenty-first century: the New Gorbals in Glasgow, and Friedrichswerder in Berlin. It will show that in in the post-1970s period the connection between urban density and social cohesion became a powerful image. Connected to anti-modernist criticism and an number of positive ideas about urban life this image had a significant influence on urban design in European cities.