Trentemoult, a small traditional village on the Loire river, just off Nantes, is a clear reminder that sometimes ratios and figures will tell you just a part of the story. This is one of the densest settlements you will see for such a small village, just if you do not look at so many other traditional fisher villages.
Image by lordnicklas on panoramio

The Nantes area was until recently just a myriad of fluvial islands. Trentemoult was on the western tip of one of them, with access just by boat. So it comes naturally that the site was scarce and the best possible use could only be attained through density, not going for height but by minimizing open spaces.

But in the end, what you get is, on such a small place with so many people, that the homes become so small as to be about the size of the also small streets. So, in the end, narrow streets end taking a disproportionate amount of space.

Cars can not be used in many of these narrow streets, and you seldom have open views; but this has not turned it into a decaying area. It has a certain charm, it is part of the metropolitan mythology as the set for the 1991 motion picture “La Reine Blanche”, and seems rather reasonably maintained by inhabitants