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Throughout the early and mid 1990s, there was widespread faith in the compact city model's ability to provide urban sustainability. However, where compact city policies had been implemented, follow-up studies began to show the predicted benefits did not happen as they should be. The article tries to peruse two opposite approaches of "Urban Sprawl" and "Compact City", with an analytical - critical procedure and their consistency with sustainability. It also compares sustainability strategies of the new urban design paradigms (such as New Urbanism, Transit Oriented Development (TOD) and Smart Growth) with compact city considerations. At the end, the article discusses about the question that does the compact city paradigm creates an obligatory context for sustainability? In fact, This article supports the belief that instead of concentrating on one particular solution, there is a need to recognize and accept the fact that a divers urban futures are likely to exist within a city and that urban compaction should only be seen as one way of achieving sustainable urban form. As indicated in the article ,each country should adapted the compact city considerations that best suits the local conditions and makes the best contribution to urban sustainability in a way that is both acceptable and feasible in their local environments. Because of the many challenges that the compact city concept faces, the focus should be on creating a diverse urban forms and sustainabilities that are most likely to 'fit' the area they are to be implemented in. Indeed, there should be a greater focus upon the processes, functions and design of the city and how they contribute to sustainability, rather than just the density dimension of compact city which occupied most of the literature throughout the 1990s. By concentrating on a more micro level scale, urban design can help overcome acceptability and feasibility critiques of the compact city that correctly highlight the radical cultural, political, social and institutional changes that will be required to move away from the sprawl.

Keywords: Compact city, Urban sprawl, Urban design, Sustainability, New urbanism, Transit oriented development (TOD) and smart growth

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