something new and different (#6)

As I suspected, the picture in the last post was a repost from January of this year. Towers of Ilium is deeply sorry for the duplication of effort. We hope it never happens again.

And now, for the exploration of a common residential development model, which I am presenting here in order to set the stage for a discussion of alternate approaches. The sketch above shows the layout of a typical, medium density, suburban block comprised of 5000 s.f. building lots. It was common in the streetcar suburbs of late 19th century Boston and has proportional equivalents in many other American cities. As far as I can tell, it has fallen out of favor in more recent developments for reasons that exceed the space of this blog post. I think its restoration would be a positive thing in the growth of new American cities because it offers a more balanced and sustainable approach to community design that could promote diversity and ensure environmental and economic sustainability. Color me idealistic. We'll see how this plays out.