Affordable and accessible housing for all city dwellers is surely a desirable goal. In a large city like Bangkok ensuring adequate and affordable housing for all can be difficult. There are multiple competing pressures for land, and private commercial developers play a big part in shaping both land and housing markets. One approach to maximizing land usage is through high-rise construction (“densification”). The traditional view of a low-income, informal settlement is of an overcrowded space that has both a high population density within its land area and within each unit. This paper seeks to investigate whether this high density (at the level of both the housing unit and the settlement or community) is observed in practice and whether it is perpetuated in both community-driven and public housing projects.