Crowding Crowding is a significant source of stress in many urban areas.
Space is often expensive and hard to find.
The result is that the majority of people is forced to live in less than optimum space and conditions. Crowding has been blamed for many social problems that seem to be the most severe in urban areas. These problems include a variety of physical, emotional and social ills, one of which is an unusually high prenatal death rate. In addition, social scientists believe that crowding is one of the factors producing the drug and alcohol abuse that seems to run rampant in crowded urban areas.