The concept of compact city has been evolved through the time, the urban development phase, and the advanced technology. Traditional compact city measurement categorized cities according to the compactness based on single-core urban development. However, the outward extension of city become multi-core and such urban pattern might need to be re-examined for sustainable development. Housing price to income ratio is a popular indicator to assess the livability in such compact city. Therefore, this study applies temporal section analysis to explore urban compactness in 1995 and 2006 in Taipei metropolitan area, Taiwan. The principle component analysis will be utilized to classify compact city types according to the urban development features. Moreover, geographical weighted regression will then be used to explore the effect of urban compact features on house price-income ratio. The PCA results show that the improved urban functions in high-medium compact city while the medium-low compact cities remain the same. The GWR results show that the higher mixed land use might attract more diverse industries which can increase household income and mitigate housing pressure.