Thanks to everyone who attended yesterday's Missing Middle Housing workshop at the Urban Design Studio, a collaborative effort between the AIA/CKC, KAPA & ASLA.
Participants from the fields of architecture, landscape architecture, urban planning and related fields gathered to examine ways to develop a hypothetical 4-acre site with missing middle housing. There is a great resource on Metro's site that describes missing middle housing, but essentially there is a gap in our housing options between single family homes and multifamily developments which include duplex, triplex, fourplex, walking court housing and more. There are many great examples of these types of housing in older parts of the city, but these types of housing became illegal or extremely hard to develop around the time after WWII due to blanket zoning changes and other code restrictions.
Missing middle housing can help with the current housing crisis while seamlessly integrating with existing neighborhoods. The ability to build this type of housing can make it more accessible to smaller-scale developers and provide more housing options for people to age in place, live closer to where they work and more.
During the workshop the attendees worked as multidisciplinary teams to develop concept plans for the hypothetical site. They explored how a site that could only support 12 single family homes with current zoning and code restraints could increase units without developing a large multifamily development complex. The exercise helped to identify some approaches to layout and unit types that would create a development that fits with the surrounding context and could be an appealing place to live, paying attention to how the buildings relate to the streets, parking, preserving existing wooded areas and additional amenities.
There were some great discussions and ideas that will help to inform Metro's Land Development Code update process. We are looking forward to working with the professional organizations on more workshops like these on a range of built and natural environment subjects to harness the creative energy of our community to solve issues and make our city a better place.
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