One of the current dominant strategies proposed for sustainable urban development is densification. UN Habitat prescribes a density of over 150 inhabitants per hectare to realize the UN Sustainable Development Goals. While some authors advocate the very reasonable benefits of density, others emphasize the potential drawbacks. The main goal of this paper is to provide a systematic review of international research on urban density and its potential benefits and drawbacks for sustainable urban development. 1208 articles were selected from Web of Science and after the screening of abstracts, 330 papers were found eligible to be included in the quantitative synthesis. Results show that the effects of densification that dominate literature are transport related studies (41%), followed by studies focusing on economics (14%), social effects (12%) and human health (11%). Least studied effects are resource efficiency (1%), service (3%) and urban environment (4%). Positive correlations with higher density are reported for transport and economics, while ecology, social impact and health show mainly negative correlations with higher density. The findings reported are generic as similar trends are found in North America, Asia and Europe and only minor differences in outcome are found in studies using different measures of density, unit or scale of analysis.

当前为可持续城市发展提出的主要战略之一是致密化。联合国人居署规定每公顷人口密度超过 150 人，以实现联合国可持续发展目标。虽然一些作者提倡密度的非常合理的好处，但其他人强调潜在的缺点。本文的主要目的是对国际上关于城市密度的研究及其对可持续城市发展的潜在利弊进行系统评价。从 Web of Science 中筛选出 1208 篇文章，经过摘要筛选，发现 330 篇文章符合纳入定量综合的条件。结果表明，在文献中占主导地位的致密化效应是交通相关研究（41%），其次是经济学研究（14%），社会影响（12%）和人类健康（11%）。研究最少的影响是资源效率（1%）、服务（3%）和城市环境（4%）。据报道，交通和经济与较高密度呈正相关，而生态、社会影响和健康主要与较高密度呈负相关。报告的结果是通用的，因为在北美、亚洲和欧洲发现了类似的趋势，并且在使用不同的密度测量、分析单位或分析规模的研究中发现的结果只有微小的差异。