Some embodiments provide techniques and systems for improving the efficiency of area recovery in an electronic design automation (EDA) flow. During operation, the system determines a utilization of a region from a set of regions in a design floorplan. Next, the system performs area recovery (e.g., by using a processor) on the region based at least on the utilization. Specifically, the system can overlay the design floorplan with a grid, wherein the grid comprises a set of grid cells and uses the grid cells as the set of regions. The grid can be associated with a predetermined number of rows and a predetermined number of columns. The system can determine the utilization of the region by calculating the utilization as a cell area of the region divided by a placement area of the region. The utilization can be incrementally calculated during the creation and optimization of the design.