He told a group at Town Hall this past week he couldn't afford to take any more time. The last two units in the White Oak condominiums, a short walk from Weaver Street Market, had sold in seven and eight days each.

McDonough, a transit planner, couldn't risk losing the condo. He didn't have many other options. If you're not upper income and don't qualify for local affordable housing programs, you can't afford to live in the Chapel Hill area, he said.

"Even if we never built another unit, below Greenbridge and Lot 5 is a huge swath of people who are left out," McDonough said. "If we hold the housing stock constant, it isn't going to help."

McDonough was among nearly 100 people who attended a forum Wednesday night at Chapel Hill Town Hall on density and how Chapel Hill should grow. The meeting was sponsored by Neighborhoods for Responsible Growth, a citizens group.

A panel of experts discussed density in broad strokes. They agreed it's not how many people the Chapel Hill-Carrboro area adds, but how it adds them that will determine the community's future character.

"You just can't shut the barn door and say, 'Sorry, no more,'" said Bill Rohe, a professor of city and regional planning at UNC. "The real trick is to manage that growth so it maximizes the benefits that come with the growth and minimizes the deficits."

"We don't want to create a town that's frozen in time," he said.

Dense development -- taller buildings, smaller homes, clustered housing -- can reduce automobile use, provide opportunities for affordable housing and preserve water quality and open space, speakers said.

Or, it can lead to traffic congestion, increased pollution and a decreased quality of life.

That makes building design critical, Rohe said. The community needs to look at five design characteristics: stepbacks (shifting upper floors away from the street), facade treatments, setbacks (the distance between buildings and property lines), transition zones from higher buildings to the lower buildings that surround them, and parking.

Rohe gave only a few examples. He said there are some "really bad" facades on Rosemary Street, without naming them. He said the four-story condominium on West Main Street in Carrboro "is an issue."

The towns are ahead of most in requiring developers to make 15 percent of their new units affordable to low- and moderate-income people, Rohe said. But even that has backfired, others said, as developers have met the requirement with units of 750 square feet and under, too small for families.

Many in the room said Chapel Hill needs to revisit its Comprehensive Plan. That plan, adopted by the council in 2000, laid out a vision for future growth. But a five-year review to see how the plan's guidelines were being followed was never done.

When Grubb Properties proposed replacing the Glen Lennox neighborhood and shopping center with a more upscale, mixed-use, dense development -- essentially what the Comprehensive Plan called for -- neighborhood residents organized in opposition. The developer subsequently pulled his proposal, and residents are working to enact new zoning protections.

Town Councilman Matt Czajkowski, who has questioned the council majority's push for dense, mixed-use development, said it's time for a new community vision.

"This meeting is strong evidence the community wants to have more discussion," he said. "Should we not be taking a real hard look at the comprehensive plan? It's nine years old. I think we know a lot more about the trade-offs."

Ruby Sinreich, a former chairwoman of the town planning board, agreed.

"The whole idea of zoning won't get what we [want]," she said. "I think we need to do a radical rethinking of how we do development."