As the world around us seems determined to fly apart at the seams, we decided to foster a bit of hope by taking another look at a problem which actually seems to have some readily available solutions: the shortage of housing, and its high cost. It turns out that one of the things driving the high cost and low availability of housing (beyond our failure to adopt the Scandinavian model of factory-built houses) is the disappearance of housing types beyond the standard (and mostly oversized) single-family house, partly due to the prevalence of single-family-only zoning. It wasn't always thus. Before the post-World War II explosion of bedroom suburbs, cities and towns offered a healthy mix of housing types including duplexes, townhouses (attached or stacked), and bungalows sharing courtyards. These alternatives between small apartments and large single-family houses have been called the "missing middle" in today's housing market by urban planner Daniel Parolek*.
Prospect, the first town planned around New Urbanist principles in Colorado, was designed by the architectural and planning firm of Duany Plater Zyberk to restore that kind of variety to the housing mix, and to offer a walkable townscape with shops and restaurants in easy reach. Work on developer Kiki Wallace's dream town, within Longmont city limits, started in the mid-1990s. I recently went back to take another look...
Attached townhouses mix with single-family houses around a central park, convenient for biking or walking dogs. DPZ intentionally mixed traditional and modernist styles while also mixing housing types and sizes. By providing a mix of housing sizes and types, including carriage houses and live / work lofts along with apartments, townhouses, and courtyard houses, DPZ anticipated and avoided the problem that young families face in many markets: they can't fit into small apartments, and can't afford the standard-size single-family house, which now averages nearly 2,500 square feet.
The mix with modern design language becomes more apparent when you walk east of that park to visit the commercial area, with apartments sited above shops and restaurants, also around a pedestrian-friendly park. The New Urbanist framework allows up to 3 stories in overall building height...
Here's the view looking north from that park. All the ground-level commercial spaces were occupied save one; that space was under renovation. We found an architect's office at one edge of the park, a possible sign that commercial space is still affordable. A built-in advantage of the 16 to 40 unit per acre density that goes with mixing housing types (and including smaller sizes) is tthat you get a walkable townscape with commercial and recreational facilities within easy reach. In my case, it took about five minutes to get from the residential park to the commercial one...
Because of the attention given by planners to these park spaces and to the generous plantings of trees, there is a relaxed feel even to the higher-density areas of the townscape.
Along with colorful attached dwellings, there is the occasional single-family house. This one follows Mid-Century Modern themes, with bands of clerestory windows, even above the garage, and a brick privacy fence with perforations to add textural interest and human scale...
This street, a pedestrians-only mews, is lined with townhouses...
No matter what you think of the mix of Dwell Magazine modern and more traditional residential styles, you'll probably admit that the town planners have done a good job with human scale, and with hiding garages in alleys.
After a brisk afternoon walk around Prospect, we're back where we started, looking at the other side of those three nicely-scaled, gable-roofed brick townhouses. Prospect fared well in the autumn 2013 flood, and the trees have grown up to make it feel like the established neighborhood it is...
Anyone looking for subdivision where alternatives to the single-family house are not offered, and where you won't be able to walk to a coffee shop or restaurant (unless you walk over to Prospect), can check out the development next door. Rainbow Ridge borders Prospect along Pike Avenue, and it has a relentless bedroom suburb vibe. Comically, considering its name, there's nothing like the riot of colors you find in Prospect; everything seems beige or brick-colored. The prevailing design language, much favored by developers in the 80s and 90s, is something we call the Garage Door Festival style...
*Footnote: The best summary we found of the "missing middle" in US housing is 8 years old, but still relevant: "Will U.S. Cities Design Their Way Out of the Housing Crisis?", by Amanda Kolson Hurley, posted Jan. 18, 2016 at nextcity.org. We examined other housing solutions in earlier posts, reviewing the post-WW2 Lustron system, along with the Case Study Houses and a parallel French project, in "Modern Housing Solutions Part 3 (or 4): The Case Study Era and the Lustron Adventure", posted here on March 30, 2023. For a look at kit houses, starting with a surviving 1920s Sears kit house, see "Kit Houses: A Solution to Overpriced Housing", posted Jan. 15, 2023. For Part 2 of this series on mobile, modular, prefabricated and kit houses, see "Mobile vs. Prefab: If It Can't Go Anywhere Can It At Least Look Like Home?", in our archives for August 3, 2017. The first in this series was "When Mobile Homes Were Really Mobile: Bowlus and Airsream", posted July 30, 2017.
Photo Credits
All color photos are by the author.
The monochrome shot of Rainbow Ridge is from ColoProperty.com and was reproduced on the Zillow website.
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