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publisherWithout a single index to quantitatively measure the compact levels of cities, it is difficult to compare the changing compact levels of a city or the compact levels of different cities. Such an index is necessary in quantitatively analyzing the effects of different compact levels on the objectives in introducing compact policies. This research proposes such an index, which is measured by the agglomeration of city functions in urban districts and the ratio of urban district area to city planning area. With the index, the compact levels of 395 cities in Japan are compared. The result shows that acompact level is likely to be higher on average as city size becomes smaller