The Mountain View City Council on Tuesday night will take a fresh look at plans to build out housing in the city's North Bayshore tech center and assess whether the area can sustain such rapid growth.

For nearly two years, the city's planning staff and a team of consultants have been trying to determine how a dense neighborhood of up to 9,850 apartments would burden the local traffic, parking and other amenities in the area. For the Tuesday meeting, city planning staff are urging elected leaders to adopt a phased approach that would start small with just 1,500 units. At that point, city officials can decide whether to go forward with building more.

As a way to control traffic congestion, Mountain View for years has imposed a hard cap on the number of cars streaming into North Bayshore. For big employers like Google, this cap has been the main obstacle to building new offices in the area.

Building housing in North Bayshore has been touted as a win-win solution.

Advocates have suggested tech workers would live near their jobs and would no longer need to drive. Plans for a full build-out of housing call for minimal parking -- roughly one spot for every two apartments. This low number is based on predictions that self-driving cars and new mass-transit options will enable most of the future residents to go without owning a vehicle.