The proposed plan, from the Cornell website.
This is Chioggia, a canal town on the southern end of the Venetian lagoon which, although charming in its own right, is completely overshadowed by its famous northern neighbor. I visited this town several years ago, and in spite of the extremely high ground coverage of buildings, there was no sense of claustrophobia. The need for park space is reduced when the waterfront is so readily accessible.
Rhoda Island, adjoining central Cairo, has an evident early or mid-20th century plan in the garden city manner, with relatively wide streets on a modified grid. Still, as virtually all buildings are mid-rise apartments, population density is very high. The Nile is no more than 500 feet away from any building.
here and here), but at least at the outset, in the late 1960s and 1970s, planners conceived of a car-free haven densely built up with apartments. In spite of rather dismal architecture, the result (at right) was strikingly urban, and moreover achieved a sense of place through 1) keeping the street fairly narrow; 2) curving the street, creating visual enclosure; 3) slightly varying the angle at which buildings face the street to create gentle variations in right-of-way width; and 4) incorporating traditional city elements such as the covered arcade, at right. The result, in spite of the architecture, is quite good, and it is probably no coincidence that the wikipedia page for the island features this very same perspective.