For over a century, policymakers have argued that homeowners take better care of their neighborhood and are just generally more desirable in other ways. As early as 1917, the federal Labor Department created a propaganda campaign to encourage home ownership. And in 1925, Commerce … [Read more...]
Opening Arlington up to Housing
Arlington County policymakers have issued a call for ideas on improving housing availability and affordability. If you'd like to submit your own ideas, you can do so here through the rest of the day. The ideas that I submitted are below. Arlington County is a national model for transit-oriented … [Read more...]
What’s a stickplex?
A stickplex is a dense residential structure or group of structures built with inexpensive materials and techniques, most commonly wood. Stickplexes use 2,500 square feet of land per unit or less. Stickplexes have per-square-foot construction costs roughly in line with detached houses due to … [Read more...]
Get the tuck out of here
In two previous posts, I’ve raised questions about the competitiveness of missing middle housing. This post is more petty: I want to challenge the design rigidities that Daniel Parolek promotes in Missing Middle Housing. Although petty, it's not irrelevant, because Parolek recommends that cities … [Read more...]
In praise of fee simple ownership
In yesterday's post, I showed that missing middle housing, as celebrated in Daniel Parolek’s new book, may be stuck in the middle, too balanced to compete with single family housing on the one hand and multifamily on the other. But what about all the disadvantages that middle housing faces? … [Read more...]
Stuck in the (Missing) Middle
Everybody loves missing middle housing! What’s not to like? It consists of neighborly, often attractive homes that fit in equally well in Rumford, Maine, and Queens, New York. Missing middle housing types have character and personality. They’re often affordable and vintage. Daniel Parolek’s new … [Read more...]
The Amazing Housing Politics of Spider-Man
How can Spider-Man possibly afford to live in New York? And how can we make the city more affordable for dear Aunt May? In the first episode of my brand new YouTube series on pop-culture urbanism, we dig into the Sam Raimi "Spider-Man" trilogy to uncover the housing problems (and solutions) of … [Read more...]
Even NIMBYs should be YIMBYs
Jeremiah Moss, a New York blogger, just wrote a long article complaining about the bad habits of his new neighbors in the East Village. I suspect many, if not most readers, of his article would think: maybe we need to zone out new housing to keep out the yuppies! But it seems to me that this … [Read more...]
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