This terrific first-person editorial on the current trends in American housing highlights both the virtues and concerns of moving toward a walkable, more compact rental market.
Excerpt:
"Beyond rentals, the clear changes in the residential marketplace also bode well for innovative approaches to smaller-footprint but nonetheless high-quality types of housing, such as “pocket neighborhoods” of cottages and slightly larger homes arranged around a common green, as championed by Ross Chapin. Downsizing trends may provide opportunities as well for more applications of the “Katrina Cottages” designed for quick rebuilding along the Gulf of Mexico coast following the loss of homes to Hurricane Katrina. A LEED-Platinum version of the latter was just celebrated in a cluster of 29 of the homes on two acres in Ocean Springs, Mississippi.
(Marketing tip: it may be time to lose the “Katrina” part of the trademark for these cottages – whose concept I love – since the potential market might increase without the association with temporary housing in the context of a national tragedy. Just saying.)"
Read the rest
here.
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