# Density Bonus

> Density Bonus converts land's present condition into a permitted future use

| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Stable ID | `node:kiduna:real-estate-mortgage:development-entitlement:density-bonus` |
| Family | Development & Entitlement |
| Domain | Governance |
| Era | Institutional Age → Agentic Age |
| Kind | concept |
| Archetype | The Tension |
| Claim layers | empirical, cultural_historical, synthesis, interpretive, symbolic_divinatory |

## What it is

Density Bonus is a concept in the Development & Entitlement family, defined here by the function it performs in the property system rather than by label alone.

## What it actually does

Density Bonus converts land's present condition into a permitted future use.

## Why it exists

It exists because place is unique and immovable while law, capital, information, and human lives must still coordinate around it across time.

## System mechanics

- **Who uses it:** owner, occupant, buyer, seller, lender, investor, steward, regulator
- **Incentives:** access, certainty, control, value, continuity
- **Inputs:** place, people, records, rules, resources, time
- **Outputs:** rights, constraints, uses, relationships, consequences
- **Dependencies:** Land, Site Control, Zoning, Capital, Construction

## Archetypal reading

- **Essence:** Density Bonus converts land's present condition into a permitted future use
- **Gift:** Clarity about density bonus makes a hidden allocation of place, time, authority, value, or risk available for deliberate choice.
- **Wound / Shadow:** When density bonus is treated as neutral or inevitable, its costs can be shifted to people who hold less information, authority, liquidity, or mobility.
- **Failure mode:** The failure mode appears when density bonus is stale, opaque, mispriced, misrecorded, overextended, or applied outside the conditions that made it useful.

## Lenses

- **Personal:** Notice where density bonus appears as a structure in your own commitments: what is held, promised, priced, protected, excluded, or deferred?
- **Business:** Density Bonus reveals a handoff among information, authority, incentives, operating work, and capital. Make the owner of each handoff explicit.
- **Financial:** Density Bonus changes the timing, priority, comparability, liquidity, or distribution of cash flow and risk.
- **Property:** Density Bonus changes how a physical place can be used, valued, financed, transferred, occupied, maintained, or reclaimed.
- **Community:** Density Bonus can create benefits inside one parcel while exporting costs or opportunity to neighbors, institutions, or future residents.

## Divination

The Tension enters the reading through Density Bonus. The issue is not only what is visible; it is which map of ownership, time, risk, authority, or belonging currently governs the situation.

**Question:** What changes when Density Bonus becomes the unit of analysis?

**Guidance:** Shift scale, clock, stakeholder, boundary, and claim layer before choosing a move.

## Game function

Creates a graph move that changes the active map. Initiative 1.

## Relationships

- **Nonrecourse Loan enables Density Bonus.** Nonrecourse Loan enables Density Bonus through a change in rights, information, cash flow, priority, timing, or physical use.
- **Exaction enables Density Bonus.** Exaction enables Density Bonus through a change in rights, information, cash flow, priority, timing, or physical use.
- **Density Bonus prices Transit-Oriented Development.** Density Bonus prices Transit-Oriented Development through a change in rights, information, cash flow, priority, timing, or physical use.

## Oppositions

- Use Value versus Exchange Value
- Speed versus Diligence

## Historical lineage and regulatory context

Read Density Bonus through the lineage of Development & Entitlement: earlier customary or local arrangements became recorded, standardized, financed, regulated, digitized, or contested over time.

Rules vary by jurisdiction and transaction. Use the cited primary sources as starting points and verify current local law, program guides, contracts, and professional standards before operational use.

## Visual direction

Text-free rounded-square enamel artifact for Density Bonus: one dominant symbolic mechanism with a restrained secondary counterforce; vitreous midnight enamel, blackened steel, warm brass, copper accents, mortgage-paper cream, deep green, slate, and sky blue.

## Engine output / Sentinel handoff

The generative interpretation above is preserved as Engine Output. Sentinel factors: jurisdiction-specific rules, factual uncertainty. These factors request contextual review; they do not delete or silently rewrite the candidate.

## Research / provenance

- [Energy Codes 101](https://www.energy.gov/cmei/buildings/articles/energy-codes-101-what-are-they-and-what-does-role) — U.S. Department of Energy; model codes, adoption, enforcement, building systems.
- [Risk-Based Brownfields Cleanups](https://www.epa.gov/brownfields/risk-based-brownfields-cleanups) — U.S. Environmental Protection Agency; contamination, remediation, reuse, institutional controls.
