Changing Markets and InnovationsIn Urban Housing Types

so we're gonna wait for a mind or two and let people come in uh and we're late waiting for people to join and then we're going to get started momentarily so welcome to on the park bench a public square conversation brought to you by the congress for the new urbanism on the park bench presents interactive conversations with thought leaders in new urbanism and allied industries providing an opportunity for the audience to engage in real time the webinar series is a platform for cnu members to engage debate and collaborate on the pressing issues of the day today we have changing markets and innovations in urban housing types with eric aust and brian o'looney discussion with interviewer david kim so share your thoughts on hashtag on the park bench www.tinyurl.com [Music] otpb feedback and remember cnu30 oklahoma city is coming up in almost three months save the dates and register uh march 23rd through 26 2022 will be cnu's first in-person congress since 2019 this will be a great chance to uh to reconnect with your colleagues from around the country walk the city oklahoma city has done some amazing things with its urbanism that i think people can learn from uh around the country and even um internationally uh how they have transformed their downtown and uh adjacent neighborhoods uh and learn from some of the best planners uh in the world uh we'll be there at oklahoma city march 23rd through 26th learn more cnu.org cnu30 and you might want to check on joining or renewing your membership uh if you become if you're a current member you can save two hundred dollars off your senior 30 registration so check your membership status today members dot cnu.org slash memberships and uh this we've got a great show coming up today i expect a far-reaching discussion on markets post covid urbanism and architecture and how all of that affects building types building types are key to urbanism there is always innovation because they respond to ever-changing market conditions and they not only respond to the market but help to create great places and our thought leaders for today eric gost is chairman of urban design associates based in pittsburgh pa eric serves as principal in charge on urban design and architecture projects across the united states and abroad he's a fellow and fellow and board member of the institute of classical architecture and art in new york city and brianna looney is design architect master planner and principal at torti dallas and partners in washington dc and he is a resident of the iconic new urban project the kentlands and there he is i believe on his porch oh looney he is author of increments of neighborhood a compendium of built types for walkable and vibrant communities published by oro press in 2020 this book is truly an encyclopedia of new urbanism design david kim is our moderator and interviewer today he's an architect urban designer and developer he is a partner in the urban design and planning collaborative toller anderson kim llc and a development company artifacts working on neighboring scale attainable infill development he's also a co-founder of the non-profit incremental development alliance and a member of cnu's board of directors i'm rob studeville editor of cnu's public square and producer on these webinars so we will have a brief presentation from both brian and eric followed by a discussion with david followed by q a from the audience so please use the zoom function zoom q a function to ask your questions as they occur to you and now i'm going to pass this along to brian and [Music] there we go can everyone see the screen yeah do you want to do full screen is it doing full screen is it maybe it is [Music] all right um we're here to talk about changing markets and innovations in urban housing types uh the the uh key change that's happening in housing types is uh the fact that our housing stock and economic system is oriented primarily to the single family type which was born and spawned out of the world uh the uh growth after world war ii uh based upon uh auto-centric uh design philosophies the uh demographics today point to a tremendous oversupply of single-family housing because uh households are shifting from the uh quintessential uh two-parent to kid form to a lot more uh singles uh downsizers and young couples and so the housing market needs to adjust and to provide uh the kinds of housing that would appeal and work well for for those groups um one of the big challenges is that the prime method of wealth accumulation since world war ii has been through um the the accumulation of principal uh through mortgages uh and in in the transformations that are were undergoing uh there's been a move towards more rental and therefore less uh wealth accumulation on the part of younger members of society uh millennials and younger and particularly uh there have been adjustments in the marketplace where both uh single-family neighborhoods are starting to get bought out into uh institutional rental portfolios uh particularly a big there's a lot of this happening in houston uh and also the uh the creation of a lot of uh built rent housing products where the housing is no longer built by uh to accommodate a for sale product but geared towards uh rental uh from day one uh and there are new products that are going into the market for the uh for primarily rental purposes um there will be a demand for more condos and smaller scale building types that uh appeal to the couples downsizers and singles that don't want to have the upkeep or the maintenance of a larger home um and because of that there has been a call propagated for what's been called the missing middle uh which uh is the type of mixed housing product uh or mixed uh mix multiple tenant housing uh that sits between single-family housing and a larger institutional 200 unit multi-family buildings uh which were the primary primary drivers in the marketplace for the last 10 15 years and still are driving a good portion of the market um but the paradigms for that missing metal harken back again to that pre-worn a nostalgia for pre-war types that primarily come from a pre-autocentric society um but these types are not completely applicable today for example uh we generally require a lot more space in our units a one bedroom of today 650 square feet back in the pre-war era would have housed a family of four and you hear lots of stories uh like john tory in my firm talks about growing up in 650 square feet in the bronx with his brothers and his parents and that was uh the typical use of a 650 square foot unit back then today that is a small one-bedroom unit and so we have to think about what it means for missing middle to become uh types that appeal to our spatial needs of today similarly uh the types that we create today we want to contribute to neighborhood charm but they need to accommodate privatized mobility i.e automobiles uh we're still not over dependence on the on on the car even in the most urban places like new york or los angeles or san francisco and so finding types that provide either storage for the vehicle or easy access to vehicles is important to the types that we develop and devise today um so there are a lot of uh of self parking types that we talk about that are part of this missing middle uh uh product work of today um the challenge is that there's a lot of missing middle getting built uh in term typologically um you know the uh the triple decker in boston the english basement in dc um but a lot of this missing middle is not well designed and so what we and there's little legal coordination or control to ensure a better quality design uh a resultant design and so it's on the private marketplace or on creative uh politicians to come up with solutions to avoid uh the challenging types uh uh many of which you see on the screen and i'll go into some of them uh for example of the bay on box this is probably the one type that's really been uh regulated against particularly in new jersey that there uh there are rules and laws that are being put in place in a lot of local jurisdictions in northern new jersey to outlaw the bayonne box uh which is a two-car garage with a set of steps and then two two doors above that uh to two separate units and um the uh but the regulations are not helping uh the housing issue they're simply in most cases just not allowing uh two unit types on what otherwise we're single-family lots and in most jurisdictions are going the opposite direction starting to allow for two unit types two units to be placed on what was a single-family paradigm previously and how do we address that other challenges are um types that are oriented for vehicular design first uh and these are called dingbats out west in in washington state and they're cousins of the single family snot house where the uh with the vehicle uh storage it takes primacy in the design of the building and again uh what we're looking for is solutions that contribute to a healthy walkable environment a health uh uh strong environment um you know there are places where the missing middle becomes the middle finger where uh types where zoning has been up zoned over time and uh people have come in and built to that uh new zoning uh and in in this particular case in washington dc have upset the the the community around them and one of the challenges here is not just the the scale of the building which is an obvious uh issue but the way that the envelope has been implemented uh and this is a challenge that has come to the fore particularly in the multi-family world where there are a lot of buildings that are shaped by code and by the most cost effective envelope construction which tends to be sheet fiber cement panels and there are architects today both uda and our and our firm and others have great examples uh who have found ways to work with uh fiber cement cost effectively and come up with some good designs and you'll see some later in the in the presentations um and there's a term that's been uh coined by emily hamilton here in dc um for these kinds of buildings and she calls them stick plex types and they're just simply uh missing middle types that have a fiber cement envelopes done not very nicely uh and again uh we need there needs to be a level creativity brought to these types and here's an example of uh of a fiber cement envelope that's done extreme exceedingly well for an accessory dwelling unit uh this is in prospect uh outside of denver in longmont uh colorado uh and again one of the the places of growth that the market is uh where the market is growing to adjust to the changes in american demographics is in the new allowance for multiple units on single-family lots or accessory drawing units and in the case on the longmont there's a this is a pretty well designed example of a granny flat over a garage but there's i have a concern about how without much consideration accessory dwelling units will be uh added to our single family communities i mean i i suspect that uh absence of hoas you'll have a lot of of of ill-considered additions as you can see on the screen here some of which particularly the one in the upper left were even uh designed by an architect and that's a ranch house with a new edition that really doesn't uh uh that really isn't sympathetic to the original design and uh absent of good design consideration or legal criterion or or uh one should expect more of this in uh older single-family neighborhoods where adus are now allowed and so the answers are not solely typological and we have to uh credit um uh dan uh relic and opticos in the missing middle book for for really pushing that in their in their in in in this in the story lines of their book that it's not just about type that you need to have more and it starts with great regulations uh and allowances uh uh these are two examples both in washington dc and stockton california uh they're allowing essentially dwelling units that are pre-designed so they have a quality design that allows you to shortcut the entitlement process uh so you get a the idea here is to get a better result uh in a with a quicker process than otherwise if you you would be forced to go through on your own another great progenitor of that methodology uh was the pattern zoning in bryan texas uh by matthew petty and uh miller busquets black architects and this is a really creative solution where again they're shortcutting the the approval processes for buildings by having four pre-approved building types that have a a allowable uh adjustments to them that create up to 23 different types of buildings that can fill the the the city of bryant you can just go in and grab a plan off the shelf get approval that day and go build which is very exciting and with color this could create an immense range of hundreds of different unit types throughout the city of brian and hopefully this kind of pre-approved a quality architecture will get will get adopted elsewhere we're also seeing in texas the privatization of architectural enforcement and because the texas legislature uh recently ruled that you could not uh regulate architecture uh and materials uh some jurisdictions as a part of approval of land development have have asked for their developers to put in place a private approval process uh this is one of the pattern books that we did uh in relation to this where we actually set out the rules and guidelines for how to implement a style so for architects that are more used to more cost-effective design and not often considering style this lays out the methodology both for them and their client to see how the process comes together and having worked with this book now i can tell you it's been very successful in that we can point out to the development teams where they're not where they've run astray in the steps of creating a particular style so in the case of spanish mission if the massing isn't quite developed properly we can easily show how that relates because of the the methodology pointed out in in the pattern book uh here and so that's been helpful to achieve a higher quality level of design um and then finally the level so that was regulation and how one can regulate but you also have just higher level of quality and it's of design and that starts with respecting the value of the land um you know if there are great trees having a tree survey protecting the trees when you design your buildings these are all one type of building uh using platform grading so you minimize the cost of the of the grading and you can get great results and then finally looking at what can be added later what you know just simply these adirondack chairs in the image make this place far stronger um because of that level that that level of of of ownership and um and and that that is brought by the tenants here this is a rental community um similar we do a lot of plans for larger scale neighborhoods uh and this is one where there are a few types uh and uh then they uh have a number of different architectural styles that can be laid across the types then multiplying that by color and you're able to get 353 variations from from only six particular building plants and that creates these great neighborhoods and then we come back and on the upper left you can see an image of what we call a pop-up plan where we apply colors and work out uh how to get a good feeling neighborhood and good variety for that for that community um you know and it even with front-loaded homes the design if you work to make the pedestrian scale have primacy you can get achieve great results this is from a project i love in adelaide called lightview uh designed by clive alcock when he was with cic uh and and you can see that they've really done a lot of work here to uh sub uh subordinate the parking uh for the vehicles and accentuate and highlight the pedestrian realm by having pedestrians scaled fences that have changes in their in their orientation and and a hierarchy of landscape and uh putting the parking spaces themselves into shadow uh this creates a great frontage even though it's majority uh fro uh uh uh front loaded uh parking and so you take all these tools together and you can make a really good neighborhood this is one of ours up in in uh cornell uh at cornell in ithaca new york where there are only three building types here but but the use of different style uh and and color and uh you know fiber cement and really cost effective materials you can create a richness that that establishes a quality uh neighborhood design and so quickly go through some types we're talking about smaller types to meet the market this is one from the cotton district uh designed by dan camp who obviously passed away from covet earlier this year uh and this is a self-parking type uh studio you park over your your unit again it's alley loaded and has a wonderful front presence uh this is another type uh again from from clive alcock and cic in in adelaide at lights view this is a 12 foot wide product that was designed primarily for divorcees and it has a huge character inside but it's only 12 feet wide um and uh these were selling for roughly 262 000 in today's dollars uh as a product uh we have some types this is uh a type that 20 gallons has done uh which are three units one is accessible on the ground floor the other two are walk up uh that again contributes to a neighborhood uh in the middle image on the top uh where and we've deployed this in a lot of communities this type but again it allows a little bit of a variety to a neighborhood that's proposed primarily of townhouses and stacked units uh and then here i'll end with some stack types this is a two over two type uh where uh they it self parts there's parking on the back and front doors on the front you go up the steps and there's a door to the right that allows the access to the unit uh at that level and down and then a door ahead of you that leads to the unit up top both have access to the garage and back both have access to the street um these now when these were built these were built uh they could have been built under irc versus the ibc code but today they're they have to be an ibc product this type which is being built in one of our plans in somerville new jersey is very interesting because it's a three story two unit type that can be built either under irc or ibc because it meets the it's under the three-story cap in irc and has two units in its height so that they can it can effectively be a a a a residential duplex but a vertical duplex and and and with a party walls and so you can see again um like the two over two uh this has a parking in back uh uh and and two front entrances in the front uh the darker unit is the lower unit the lighter unit is the upper unit rl the elevations we designed are in the upper right and then what was eventually implemented and implemented with another architect is in the lower right and that's all i have brian all right hey thanks brian hey first of all i want to mention um i just want to thank rob for the invitation to join you guys today uh on the park bench here i think what cmu is doing with beyond the park bench is just a great series there's so much to do out there in the world right now and it's great to see um you know these discussions so we can all work together um i'm also want to mention it's just a real pleasure to share this call with david with brian uh these are two practitioners i really hold in the highest regard and you know great practitioners and great people so uh it's great to be on with you guys and so when we're just talking about this i mean you know when we're and it's really hard to talk about typologies without talking about the context of which we're in um you know there's a lot of things a lot of times we've kind of dreamed up a lot of great ideas but but in in you know you you need a context of which to push them you know as we've you know 10 years ago we were thinking about what a great idea would be to do micro types and and here we are um so a lot of times as brian mentioned there's a lot of things that are there's a lot of these externalities that are affecting things you know right now we're in an area where we've got high costs in every area we've got very low supply which has its own set of challenges uh you know sometimes we like to think that uh the our our great work is what's selling these things in reality you can sometimes just put up just about anything um and it can sell it right now um there's a lot more housing choices there's the market is getting ready for more housing choices as brian mentioned too there's a diverse uh diverse options are starting to emerge and and finally i you know we have to say that we are in a pandemic right now and that is changing some of the the expectations from the market and it'd be great to dig into some of those things when we get into some of the questions on the way um the um uh one thing i wanted to mention um real quick is that oh sorry uh is is that you know whenever we're working in these kind of positions we have their uda we have our own set of goals we have uh we're really interested in and making urban places in whatever we do we we are interested in the development of the inside of the unit um for sure for sure but one of the things that we're always interested in is how does these how do these types start to make urban space around us um you know we want to invent and involve the evolve the types from within but and at the same time solve for that diverse market those are things that we're uh we're very passionate about one of the things that we're we're definitely uh interested in here is that the um is that we're gonna well first of all i'm gonna i'm just gonna share with you uh two sample projects that we have today um the uh one of which is something we developed in the recession it's the daybreak um garden park it was actually another different type of context the great recession was where we had a much more uh challenging uh uh budgets and so forth so those are set of townhouses that were developed in 2009 and we don't and those were active adults so we don't talk about that quite enough and then it was something we did and then fast forward to 2019 um some of our micro townhouses that we're doing within within daybreak the daybreak on garden park is an age targeted community uh master on the main throughout condos as well we'll talk about that in a minute so there's a whole broad uh range of types and unit sizes available and together uh these were designed to form form a neighborhood and the feeling of a neighborhood um so you know the master plan allows for connectivity through daybreak this is a very it was a kind of one of the many neighborhoods within daybreak uh the lake is on the on the east side there the downtown is starting to emerge on the west and we've got services to the south um so it has all the series of connectivities each pathway through feels very different um but there's a whole series of typologies from cottages on 70-foot lots all the way to 40-foot lots um manchester we'll talk about a moment which are like a type of town home and then the condos which were all you know um all on one floor one floor living on these mansion nets we just wanted to share these with you these these are on the one on the left is about a um 1 115 square feet the one on the right is about 15.85 it goes from a one story unit um to a two into two two-story units um in varying square footage one of the key things about obviously with with with this type of active adult living and we don't talk about this enough is the idea of of master on the main is is the idea of having the master on the main which has its own set of challenges so the lots are a little bit wider than we typically are doing today even though the the the mass is uh very small but what what is interesting about it is that we were trying not only were we making street space but we're making space within so you're making a garden space so having that guar that unit being able to the master be able to look onto the garden or also in the case on the right as it's outside outside um looking out you know to the to the street so what was interesting about these this shape is that we we were only allowed to do three types and we had to create a several streets of these so how do we create the sense of uniqueness and place that each street has its own uh sense of of place in its own character um and then how do you also have a sense that you live in a very unique building so we we created the three typologies and then three elevations uh for each and because of the massing type you can see the one story two story and then the kind of l-shaped massing it it allowed us to think about uh more creatively about how these things can go together and fit together uh you can see here where you see the you know we can take a3 b3 and c3 and put it together and make it make a type um take make a type here that that works but the the when we put these together into um and started into the twos threes and fours which aren't on this page we started getting so many countless permutations um and and when you start to add in different uses of materials and colors you started getting the kind of range of things and streetscapes throughout um so and then when we put them together they they are they can be read in different ways as both a house working with some of the cottage-like forms that are nearby um but then also working with the condominiums which have a larger scale which also had scale elements of single-family residential scale elements applied to them so you get the sense that you kind of can see your own unit within it but then also see in a larger format as well which is some of the important parts of kind of mansion type living i'm going to take you to fast forward about 10 years to the daybreak micro townhouse which we've been developing which is a 12 foot wide town home 40 feet deep arranged to make urban space on a series of addresses we were uh provided this block within the downtown which is starting to emerge in daybreak uh so we have a kind of paseo address which connects through the block a kind of interior park address here and then i kind of parklet there on one of the key roads and then also boulevard street forum addresses one of the things that's interesting about this is we're getting about 33 units to an acre here uh we also have some 20-foot townhomes kind of introduced in there too to create a richer mix of types for the builder to offer but what's interesting is when you look at the density we are at the density of kind of surface parked apartments and condos but yet it has a much better connectivity through it so as you you can work through the block and anyway we have sidewalks here and connections here so you have that system as well as the alley system so you get the kind of that fine grain of urbanism the fine grain of space uh within uh but at the same time you're also working in the kind of larger downtown environment around it so the way that it worked is that we were we had developed a 2000 uh sorry excuse me in about 2009 we developed a 16-foot town home for this builder it was very popular in the recession as the recession got out of the recession uh the 20-foot became much more popular and they actually left it behind and then all of a sudden the 16 foot starts getting a little more interesting as costs go up and then all of a sudden now it's like the 16 foot is getting pretty expensive to build so they challenged us and we talked about how do we create a 12 foot so we started to to uh look at different dimensions and as we we shrunk the dimensions it really one of the things when you're developing at this scale the critical issue is where do you put the stair so the stair and kind of folding the stair in the middle of the type really gave us the most flexibility to get light on both sides and to get the to take as much advantage of the width as we could um when we started looking at this type it really is just taking that stair and then it's taking one of our 16's and smashing it down but we we did add a fourth floor you can see in gray on the right uh which adds a third another bedroom and then there are other types you can see in additions of of wider units on the end to make a 16 foot wide room on the front which really does open up the unit significantly um but we bring light down through the stair and the kind of sense of openness you can also see real quickly that we actually ended up building them with closets but original design actually recommended the pox closet system which is very which is a really wonderful closet system it's a little shallower than a built closet but also gives you the flexibility to be able to move that around the room and use these in any way so as brian was mentioning addressing various different types of the market these were immensely popular right off the bat but the flexibility of having a room being an office or a you know a hobby room or a bedroom or a guest bedroom or whatever in this day and age it's really important to have that flexibility particularly when you start getting these these unit types as well and to be able to choose where you want your bedroom to be in in the in the space so um you can see a little bit of that it also has a kind of parts approach of devices that will help provide elevation flexibility um and different ways the the unit can be um can be developed and then how they come together into elevations of buildings so we have very symmetrical buildings you can see on the top left and very asymmetrical buildings and on the on the right where you have kind of a maybe use some repetition to set up a moment where you get a kind of larger bay window and then also the the change in scale that's brought on by the roof type it's as well so we bring these together to make the the block uh uh design and then how those things you can see on the right you can see that connection through we're highlighting there is trying to invite people actually to connect through the blocks so you get that sense of urbanism and scale and then also bringing them together to make park spaces and open spaces that are actually usable so using the sidewalk around it to make a green space that's that's an active one that you can just flow right into that green space one of the challenges and whenever you're getting into making smaller smaller units is really trying to focus on making great urban space in the public realm that's something that more and more is the this renewed interest in the public realm is important and then also the visibility of the roof terrace is important is giving that sense of human habitation brian mentioned the chairs in space you know and every time you think of places that have active that invite you to be part of it um it's important even at the roof terraces being able to look down on those faces and feel like people around you is important um last i want to leave you with a couple quick images one is on the parking um we have these are one car per and as brian mentioned that's a big issue we're still dependent on that in some of the units we slid them forward giving up kind of parking pad at the end you can see we slid the unit back to conceal that so we didn't kind of kind of get a nicer streetscape and then on the front you can see we slid by sliding the unit back that provides a kind of front yard environment fence yard so you get a different uh condition and varying streetscape along that sale you may be curious what's it like to be inside one of these here's here's an image in construction uh you can see it's about 10 feet wide in there a little bit a little bit more a little bit but we're trying to get as much light as possible and that kind of flexibility is important i wanted to share one more other more thing that's on the boards is we're working on on is starting to push a lot of different typologies together really creating that kind of sense of of mixing things but also broadening the market and having a lot of people living in the same place so this is one that is on a big large kind of regional trail system north of daybreak uh there's a rail line on the right side this is post-industrial land so we're going for a zoning change but we've got all the different types of both single-family condominiums apartments interlocking townhomes that have an average of about 16 15 feet per unit and then also kind of micro town homes here as well these are about 14 feet so we've got all these different types starting to mash together but the the liner of the single family gives it a kind of palatability to the community and then putting the apartments and the condos next to the rail tends to um although it's the parking provides a buffer it tends to have um the rail line and the uh the um nearby mini storage don't usually show up at public meetings to to uh when we go for a zoning change so so thinking about those kinds of things is that putting a lot of units together also provides a much much more diverse market so and that's kind of what the place will feel like so with that i'll just i think i just wanted to leave you with just one quick couple of recommendations that we want to mention moving forward is on the interior you always we always want to think about updating the typologies for for modern life as as brian mentioned and thinking about thinking really critically about how we can use things and maybe using more flexibly i love that image that brian showed of the pre um pre-approved units is how does you know and there's a lot of uh um uh people out there developing furniture like bringing back the murphy bed and and furniture that collapses down to allow you know like on a 10 foot and a 12 foot townhouse your how your living room can become a yoga a place to do yoga at the same time entertain friends at the same time as critical consider the context in making urban space i mean we're delivering a high quality public ground that's we're here for we can't it's not just about the unit type one place or another it's about how they come together and make spaces and finally that and this is important is thinking about changing local policies to allow for these broad spectrum of genotypes how do we allow this to these kinds of things to happen this is stuff that we're sharing can only happen in daybreak because of some of their particular entitlements those are critical so thanks for the chance to share all these and uh looking for the discussion thanks eric um those are really good lots of great examples and i think that um the things that um as i as i watched uh the as i uh viewed the presentation i think i wanna um obviously there are um you know one of the aspects that that brian talked about as well as um that that you ended up with eric is that um the built environment is is shaped by the policies what it enables and what it doesn't allow um and obviously um uh from my event from my uh experience or just my observations about the way things are now is that a lot of flexibility has been uh outlawed and now we're just trying to get back to more flexibility so that it enables you know that there isn't just one nuclear family um model of living and we and there's there's so many different types different um uh demographic and so as you i think the question that i wanted to ask is as you as you um look at that when you encounter a design when you know when you're designing a building or designing certain units or when you approach a project um who were the types of people that you were intending to design it for and then after it was built who are the types of people that you found were occupying those units um or was that was there a difference or was it exactly the way you would intend it or you know what was what was sort of the outcome just tell us some you know a little story about how how those things may have occurred brian do you want to take this one or you want to what do you think i'll just i'll just answer that with a quick um uh story so the um so we had done 10 years ago now and some of the images i showed were of military family housing and the you and you know the us government uh used to have a lot of folks serving who really liked their job uh were very happy about the the the kinds of activities they were doing day to day their potential growth was in the military uh but they would come home within the day and they lived in in in squalor uh and you know and some even said that the us was the us government was the largest slumlord in the united states and the people would come home to spouses who would just say we have to go we got we can't stay here anymore and so part of what happened with the privatization program some of the housing i showed is that there now it's the case where uh there is housing you can get in monterey california or on the potomac in fort belvoir that you could not afford no matter what unless you were a serving uh a sailor or soldier and because of that now it's flipped and there are people who are staying in the military one of the reasons they're saying they're staying because i could never get this kind of housing and so that's a that's both speaking to uh uh success on the part of the government and serving and serving the military but also a a questionable failure on the part of the private sector in not being able to people keep up with people's aspirations for housing and so i think we are looking to find ways to solve the housing needs and to your point david i think part of the challenges that we have there are lots and lots of more regulations that are imposing uh upon what we build and how we build but in ways that aren't readily apparent to the buyer and so they're not aware that we've had to spend a lot of money on on meeting accessibility laws that that make a more uh equitable country they're not aware of some of the new challenge or the or the requirements for the plumbing system or the or the or uh in the case of florida for the strapping that keeps the home together and when the hurricane comes through uh and so but those those regulations are pushing up the prices of house you know that the base cost is is you know in fl you know there was a price to be paid when the post andrew uh codes went in place in dade county and they've up and they up the cost of housing and we and we have to find ways of being more creative in how we build uh and you can see that in in the building in particular i like showing photos of buildings and construction like like eric showed because it really starts to explain uh why and how and how we're getting pushed to make a cost-effective building product and i'd like to mention too i mean there's some things i three things come to mind uh when you know thinking about um you know who uses uh and how to where how do i how do you get your how do you get to a program you know um well for one thing is we're always working with our clients to try to remind them not to be the market themselves you know is don't don't always build buildings for yourself i can't imagine why anybody would not want to have you know would want to live in a 12 i mean that our client you know helped us with that particular thing but that's something that is always a challenge is try to put try to think try to understand the market and and sometimes it's important to have them have an outsider's perspective and to think about things and even to do post occupancy questionnaires when they're selling products um the other one is that what's important is that um the master developer is it's important for them to have a segmentation and to think about the broader part of the market and a lot of them uh developers will oftentimes sometimes like chase each other like lemmings i used to have a boss these to say that right off the hill but if they can think about things that um that how do we become how do we become more nimble and be able to have sales for a long period of time and be able to understand the flexibility of the market and adjust to them is really a great business sense but it also creates better urbanism so you let the the market kind of develop a much more richer environment where you don't get the predictability of going down one street or another of all the same you know you get these changes and things like that so it's a little bit like cylinders of a car things are going up and down along along the way when it comes to uh types and the last thing it's kind of a hidden one is it what's interesting is when we started digging into it at one point we were kind of like think we had something and then we find out it's not doing well and and you know it's interesting when you find out that and this is in new product development is that and is that it's sometimes it's the sales team that's that's not always um you know helping people understand so if they're not bought into a new product that you're putting together and putting out there they need to be bought in from the very beginning or they're not going to sell it or that you know you don't want this this is you know so so uh it i i can't say how many times we've run out of that you've got to you kind of work with them and actually some of the best sales agents are ones that have actually worked in existing wonderful neighborhoods that have been able to sell great great products despite the fact that they have you know substandard closets and things like that you know so so it's kind of like um so so when you're when you're in the new product realm and things like that it's important to be to be understanding that that the the sales team understands um the broad market that you guys described i think i want to ask one more question before we head into the questionnaire question and answer because i don't think we have a whole lot more time but um i mean speaking of flexibility i think as um uh when we look at um because right now as with cobit and a lot of people working off-site as well as you know so they're looking for space that they can work um they can be productive but at the same time be alone but at the same time be together with other people um and obviously i think the daybreak the way it's uh congregates it's it's you know the buildings and the frontages uh around around the common space which accomplishes one part of that but at the same time um that that with adus as well as with flexible live work spaces um uh i mean that's it's difficult to i mean what am i trying to think is that how do you get what are the um getting those flexible spaces is um uh is a challenge with the regulations and and with the sales and the likes so could you kind of elaborate on that and how you players have approached and how you've gotten it to i mean especially for the the micro units i think that's that's one of the things that you're doing as well as different accessible adus you know people are using them differently oh you're muted yeah uh the year muted sentence has been used so many times last two years it's amazing i've never used that before uh coven um but you know it's it's fascinating because i would love to say that we were clairvoyant in the fact that we understood that there was a pandemic coming we actually had that in development prior to that so but interestingly it does does provide the kind of acoustic separation so you can have an office on the ground level right where the door opens almost like a live work type environment you could have an artist office on the on the fourth floor overlooking the mountains and having you know i'd love to and you get the acoustical separations of that i wish i could say that we had thought of that before but we did you know obviously the flexibility of that and thinking about acoustic separation was was critical i i mean i have to say that i uh that on on a lot of our units we had actually had thought about saying well you know why why do we need it at home office and let's try to think about the open living open the significantly open floor plans and with coven those those are not necessarily as popular um you know this whole um you know work from home notion is you know caught us a little bit um by surprise i i mean you know it's interesting because i was reading and not to digest i was reading lewis mumford uh the other day and he was and it was like he was writing in the 50s and he was kind of fascinated with the fact that all of a sudden you know in this had started in the 30s that you know it became almost like socially unacceptable to be you know working at home it was really you're building you know businesses would build workspaces for everyone and completely separate from from the home work from home in the course of human history is is relatively new new new topic so what what we've now have is we have this office environment that's actually spread out into into the suburbs and into typologies that are going to start reacting to that uh whether or not we like it or not and um and that's a really interesting um uh characteristic and it's it's definitely created more focused on the public realm um you know daybreak um you know and really was when when when kova started emerging um i remember talking to them on the phone as a kind of uh their leadership and the development team was starting to worry that this might be another 2009 and you know we're going to start reducing a lot of sales and stuff if anything it actually became the opposite and people recognized they had a good they they were getting very good value the houses were were in places where they could go for a run during lunch hit all the trail system go around the lake uh paddle board during lunch uh go meet people for lunch that's or just least get thanks and get back to their home in an hour you know you can do all those things and there is no other place like it so the idea of of not only having a unit that serves their their needs but also a public realm around them has changed significantly changed a lot of people's uh perception of how to build communities that it's more than just a great unit um i think i heard we work with charles adams a lot who was the developer that brought us celebration many years ago and he was telling us recently that that in uh some of the studies they've they've working with some of the um economics teams have said that um 90 of buyers uh want access to trails as their number one request access to trail system so so people are already thinking about the public realm and connectivity outside of their unit so so it is it is a a great time for us to be thinking about urbanism and the interaction of how these units serve people so you know public transit was and and the way we get around was all about getting people from point a to point b at peak hours and now we might be thinking very differently about the public realm and the way in which we get around yeah yeah i'll just react to a couple things eric i think i think uh healthy communities is a big uh growth trend and the access to trails are clearly part of that i think also just designing uh i i think you know the the newer risk community was a trailblazer in terms of thinking about walkability as critical and and and as a prime part of of a living environment and making sure you're able to easily access uh um you're both not only for trail amenities and nature but also just community amenities and how and and for your for your health um we are uh in the multi-family world in terms of designing for flexibility it's it's some some of the challenges we have is just having to bring people along from their from standard processes for example we're trying to do these buildings now where the ground floor of a multi-family project is flexible um and we don't know where the market's going to be now and we certainly don't know what the market's going to be for 10 years so we've designed a space that is conventionally about 45 feet deep which makes a stu which makes a loft unit on the ground floor um but we can add bays to make it a 60 foot deep retail space and so having to explain to the leasing folk well no actually it's really 60 feet you can lease this at 60 feet if you need to to the retail brokers who are not used to a working with a mixed-use uh structure but b having that many parameters that they can play with are offered to their to their potential tenants you know really saying here this this they want to just a piece of paper that says this is the box that we're going to sell you and we're like well no we can actually customize it for you and and that uh that's that's hard for us for for some folks to because it's it's almost too much uh but luckily in this case we were with the team that the the re the reason the brokers are sophisticated enough to see the power in that and so uh it it should it should empower more success over the long run uh and over the life of the building whichever direction things go um i'm gonna start to ask some of the questions that are on this in the q a where i think one of them is i think you know the brian the one that you address with uh with um matthew petty and the pattern zones um because i know that that's fairly new for a lot of people i mean that's fairly new and i know that they're doing a couple more projects around the country or in the in the midwest and near arkansas and stuff but let's just elaborate about the pre can you elaborate a little bit about that process the pre-approved housing types and that create neighborhoods quickly the one that's in bryan texas sure so so the great thing about the bryan texas plan is because it's public it's public you can just go you literally go to the bryan texas website right now and download the whole document and i'm if you're interested i'd recommend doing that but the pro and they talk about the they're sort of a preamble to the that talks about how the system works uh very simply the conventional system you actually have to hire an architect or or hire someone to come up with plans you bring the plans into the city uh building department the building department reviews them that goes through multiple different sections of the building department the there's a guy looks for plumbing code and for mechanical code and for building code and it takes a while what they've done and often times you you're pressed for you know you're you're just trying to build something quickly take advantage of a piece of property you own so you're you're you're not focused on the community aspects of the design what they did in brian is they said well wait a minute why don't we as a community because we're seeing these not so great things getting built in our town why don't we come up with a bunch of types that people can just take off the shelf shortcut the approval process we approve it so we already know it's in a better quality than we'd otherwise get and so it's a win-win for both we get better quality buildings in our public realm and the bill and the and the the landowners uh are able to have a product right away that they can go build immediately uh which saves them money and uh and gets us a better result so that that's the sh that's the thinking um uh and uh and it's exciting that it's taking in some place like texas where um uh you know where market costs are are always uh uh at the forefront and so it's we'll see if it takes a challenge i hope i hope no one will dare challenge the the quality of the designs but the idea that of that pre-approved type which has a every one of them has a relatively elegant street facade should up the values for everybody uh and and so that's really what's exciting about that process and i hope more communities uh uh adopt it partly because i think it will also in no ennoble and enable a more typological thinking about uh how we how we do our zoning in in this country i mean i think that's the true uh genius of it is actually create in brian they now have a typological code they didn't real and it's not coming from zoning it's coming from the building and things and so that's really powerful yeah i know that i know that there was a the challenge with not one to two family buildings that are under the irc but buildings that are that are categorized as ibc meaning three units and up um not the actual design of the building but actually the the permitting process or the the approval process by which it has to be stepped by an architect you know that kind of stuff and it's all it's all legalese and more regulatory as opposed to actual form um and uh um i want to ask a couple questions um eric i know that you addressed that the high ceiling heights i think the question um the elaboration of that was um it says pros and cons of designing ceiling heights and extra ceiling heights become becoming desirable or smart especially in smaller unit sizes and then maybe along with that you can you can um see it as or deal with how um well i think these are called because they're all single family so you don't have to do you don't have to comply with ada requirements for those but um how do you normally do that i mean how would you address those issues with it just excessive accessibility yeah yeah accessibility's one that we have uh several we have units that actually do specifically handle that we have elevator shafts and things like that and zero entry all of our ground floor master ones were also had accessible entries so those handled that i think in terms of the uh the ceiling heights um you know a number of them were like nine feet and things like that and i think the key thing is trying to get as much glass and light in there um i was when we were talking pri before that we went live i was sharing his own personal uh uh uh story i i i'm living in in i'm i've have uh my office in an attic here at my house and it's up inside the roof and um and i never really and i i you know it's it's it has a very very low ceiling i can like literally put my hand up there and touch it and um but i'm inside the roof and it's interesting because i i actually even despite in this very personal life despite three pfizer shots i still i still had a breakthrough case of code so i spent 10 days in this room and i have to say that i never got bored of the room so it's not always about height specifically in some ways it's about the design and the shape and the things that are going on around you like i mean that's just maybe maybe more personal to me but but i think uh sometimes just pure just just pure numbers of height isn't necessarily going to give you a better experience um inside a room so i've learned that was one of my lessons from from code yeah and we we've run across challenges with with both fair housing and then specific state rules like in that somerville project in new jersey uh they had a visibility requirement uh for 50 of the units and when you're doing stacked units you've already basically taken 50 of the units out so that all of a sudden forces you to get visibility everywhere uh and that's really hard and it unfortunately challenged one of one of the public spaces that were one of the smaller pocket parks that we're going to have really got hindered by by having by that being forced onto the plan because they weren't thinking well wait a minute maybe there might be a two over two type here they were just thinking well let we won't require all the units require half the units but when someone comes up with the two over two type opposite half the units are all the frontages and so it sort of kill it's sort of you know those kinds of requirements that are uh well intended can really can really hinder the quality making of a public realm i wanted to break in for just a second here um and say we're right around the hour mark and hopefully we can continue to ask questions uh we will have a video that we will be posted in about a day and so the folks that have to leave now because at the end of the hour but you had a question and it's answered you can uh see the answer on the video tomorrow but we'll keep on we've got more questions in the q a and we'll keep going um there there's a question here about the the threshold between ibc and the irc and uh i think brian you alluded to it relative to the um the two over two in a townhouse form and i've gotten in trouble with that as well so um could you because and it depends on the jurisdiction as well the way that it works so yeah so so they've they've tightened basically they allow for duplexes and then townhouse rows and where you get into trouble like and and there's a three-story cap and so uh your the four story two over two all of a sudden is no longer easily regulated under irc although there are jurisdictions who want that kind of type and are adjusting their irc to allow for it to make more uh generally that's no longer the case under prior codes they did allow it or it was vague enough where you could do that as a irc type now the the the regulations getting tighter uh in language very simple uh chosen language in the irc that's limiting its scope another piece of language they have now that's limiting its scope is uh if you're trying to do back-to-back town houses and only and a townhouse only has one front edge all of a sudden that it there are ibs the irc code that can be interpreted to say that it has to be a through you have to have two facades and so by not having the two facades you are automatically trunked into the ibc and so they're um uh they uh it's an interesting uh choice of words for the definition of townhouse that one should be careful of the definition of duplex and the height uh and and that one looking at these types need to be very careful uh uh about and uh if you have any question immediately have a conversation with your local code official and get an interpretation or present your interpretation and then um make sure they agree with it um so yeah i mean um we designed some uh and designed some uh two just two-story they're they're cyber there's they're 10 houses two town houses but they're fl is a flat over flat so what you end up getting is basically a two unit and a what you have is a two you know two over two and instead of a two over two and a townhouse you have one over one in the townhouse and um me i just assumed that that was part of that to be approved as an irc but it's it was in in that locale it was it was deemed uh ibc and so in ethical privacy so right and and for those who aren't uh apprised of this that could mean additional costs in terms of fire protection sprinklers uh other kinds of connection details that uh might be imposed upon you from an ibc standard as opposed to an irc standard uh so uh yeah i i do think that it's a it's it used to be really liberal uh maybe 10 15 years ago and now it's gone a little too conservative i think uh for cost-effective housing i would hope to see the irc accept more uh stacked product into the irc uh you know i think you know that uh or a new category that's a little more cost effective that answers the concerns of of for fire protection but uh we you know we we all want to design safe buildings we all none of us want to uh create a a a type that would uh pose a danger and so uh but i think the uh there's so many layers on layers of safety built into the codes at the moment that i think that um we can we can rethink some of it to ensure cost-effective design on cost-effective implementation i mean the great news is i don't believe you know in with in sprinkler multi-family buildings i don't i don't think there's been a death in in in uh even with the most harrowing of fires like the one in edgewater where there was an actual occupied 13r building everyone got out alive um but the difference in you know for those who knows fire protection uh there are two kinds of systems you can have in the multi-family world one that protects the building long enough so you can get out but doesn't protect the building it isn't there to infect the buildings and there to protect the occupants the other system is designed to protect the building so interstitial spaces and closets and and and in the middle of trusses are all protected from fire uh to ensure the the uh the longevity of the of the building itself and that's really the the design difference between what a 13r and a 13 system is i know a number of our clients for their own asset protection reasons are moving away from using 13r and only 13 because it really isn't that much of a difference in cost in in terms of protecting their asset and getting lower insurance rates so sorry to go there for that but no problem i think that um there's a couple of questions relative to the pattern zone um and more i think one once somebody was asking about um you know uh how much do muni's pay for the pattern zones but i i would think that those are particulars that you can that would best address with matthew petty uh infill group in arkansas and fayetteville arkansas as well as the um uh brian because you just put the names of them in the in the um in the chat so that people can get it and that way they can refer it to them um yeah matthew petty isn't is in federal arkansas so you can he he's he's you know he um he's one of the guys who started this up so um in riot texas yeah we we've got one or two going as well so it's it's it's it's we think it's an exciting place for growth and uh and rethinking how we regulate ourselves and making a more cost effective building environment uh it's it's impressive their innovation at brian and and they've won a lot of awards for those for that for that uh uh approach and rightfully so i think um we can wrap this up with this final kind of more design questions um it's uh actually the very first question one of one of the constant frustrations that says that that i have here that i have are the features of the so-called mcmansion finding their way into the design of missing level types likely because the designers only have experience designing single-family homes for most of their careers do you think that the design quality of this middle types will improve as designers begin to get more experience in designing them and what else can be done to promote and design in these types and then mike hawthorne asked what are the biggest zoning and tenants to get designed for residential building types so essentially kind of the both from a both from a culturally cultural design aspect of it as well as the regulatory framing aspects of it um what are some of the biggest impediments it's hard to say right yeah well i mean i think one thing to mention real briefly is that i think that i think anthony's right i mean you know one of the things that we're gonna find is more as people get used to designing them we'll get a lot better quality uh there it's really interesting because you've got places like the bay area which they're you know classically we're very interested and they're really good at designing single family types particularly through you know kind of the mid-century modern era and stuff like that but they designed horrible high-res because they didn't have a lot of experience to it so you know larger buildings are getting better in those contexts as they get more experience and more exposure to it i mean it's really interesting when you look back to like the 70s and the 80s into like old architecture magazines there's not as much focus on housing as there is today and a lot of that is because of cnu because of the discussion about the missing middle and the fact that you know and and cnu's been good about pushing and and overall i mean the basic the foundations of cnu were based on housing and thinking about the way in which people live in cities that's absolutely critical and and in many ways for many years we were not focused on that so i think i think in in absolutely i think you know it's been a bit of a lost art and the fact that we're we're having this discussion today and and looking at it more i think is is is important i don't know if and i i you know just i i'll actually just let me take a second to also address um uh mike thorne's um comment i i think that what i what i'd love to see is for one thing we do we definitely need to i mean a lot of the types that we've shown in many cases we're not we're not available and in so many places we're working with a very very outdated zoning and you know you you know and even when you look at like even a place as sophisticated as the city of new york their zoning is so antiquated that every time there's a new project they have to rewrite zoning for that individual project i mean more or less i mean there's just so much you know so many places are way way behind um where we need to be in the kind of control so it's hard because we're trying to catch up to then to then um get ahead um for sure so it's a real problem i mean i think enough to take a long answer but what i'd love to see at some point is when you you know look back and i have to be careful with this reference here but but um you know when you look at like houseman what housman did for paris is you know there was medieval paris and then there's these long corridors of of of new architecture that was then the the form and the in the zoning you know the location of the cornice and the way the buildings were shaped you had ground level retail then you had you know storage places then you had piano noble a you started getting income that was vertically mixed use and i'm not advocating for that at all i'm not saying we should start housemizing neighborhoods but some the the controls in the areas created an environment and of course today now you can even living in the top of a parisian condo is extremely expensive but at the time it was creating something that was very interesting and creating the recipes for a city and and what we have to get to the back to and i mean obviously there's low income housing credits and things like that is how do the controls you know help create great urbanism and great urban life and uh diverse neighborhoods and some of the aspects of cities um that in in a way that is very much like that and um you know like when you and you know like when you look at like a tree in a park you know like that's a looking at just the tree and and the lawn around that's not healthy for the tree and you're just looking at a tree and you're isolating that tree trees are really good in forests you know there's a whole biosphere around i'm not a bonnet so i'm not i'm not sure if i'm making any sense but but nevertheless that's what urban life is like is that all of these things are reliant on each other so you have to be looking at comprehensively and having to in order to get urban life we have to have the controls in order to provide those kinds of things one type is not going to solve the problems but the controls around it um can create the right recipe for for urban life yeah i'm going to respond in a different way i'm going to talk about change and uh design is slow to react or come up with good responses to it i think fiber cement uh we're still figuring out how to do great five percent building some of the lights view examples i showed if you're of a modern inclination uh there's some good solutions that onion flats and the uh uh cherokee towns in denver and uh and the um uh and the lights view examples in australia came up with that solved that but we're also adjusting to change in ways that aren't visible for example the newest code adjustments that we're all grappling with are the new installation and uh and uh requirements that really change the way our envelopes are coming together and that's going to cause more just ugliness for a little while as peop as people figure out how to do it well and there will be there will be more buildings not designed well because there's a code requirement that requires a vent or requires a a a a greater thickness in one part of the wall than another part of the wall because it's constructed differently and that's going to take a while for architects to figure out and you know eventually architects will and but it's going to take longer for the for the market that doesn't use architects so the irc world to catch up and that's where you know frankly i'm not hopeful i think there's going to be a lot more ugliness uh to to contend with before we resolve and before solutions that have solved it from creative architects uh filter through and start to be adopted and become a tradition um and and just where we are yeah i think that um let me just add one aspect to this and the way that i think about it is it often um look at the i mean in the same um the principles of new urbanism is that um 95 i look at 95 of all building fabric is is the backdrop building meaning people where people live uh where people there's commerce that happens and then there are the special buildings that have um that have institutions that are that are the marquee like the civic centers like um and unfortunately our culture is we we want to make we want to we're so hyper individualized that we want to make everything stand out and instead of just building the like if you go to an older neighborhood you see the buildings they're they're really interesting when you go up to them but you don't know who designed it but they look like the essentially they're the same as the one next door except it's slightly different style um but um you know i think that the thing that my my business partner and i we we always talk about john john anderson is that you know there's nothing wrong with just the simple box and making sure that you place the right windows and the doors and the openings where they should go and in terms of where where they where they should face and know know your fronts from your backs you know know your face from your ass and uh and you know just be simple and you know you're not you know you're not there to scream out don't don't worry about screaming out loud that i'm here you know it's it's about just making sure that it works for the neighborhood so for the block so anyway rob i wanted to thank um eric gost brian o'looney david kim for a great discussion today and everybody who showed up and to listen and ask questions um i really enjoyed it uh i wanted to wish everybody happy holidays and we'll see you in january on the park bench thank you thanks everybody