As the days of suburban sprawl give way
to those of urban density in U.S. metros--"smart growth," most call
it--providing sufficient housing remains a challenge. Decades of
planning regulations and highway patterns support single-family homes
built far outside a city center. Even in areas where big residential
towers make sense, developing them takes a long time and costs a lot of
money. Manhattan wasn't built in a day.
Planning scholar Jake Wegmann,
who's in the process of moving from Berkeley to the University of Texas
at Austin, believes there's another way: backyard cottages. Hear him
out. Individual micro-units on single-family properties don't require
much time or money to build. They don't need much space to sit on.
They're affordable almost by definition and are well-suited to the
modern family--from the recent college grad living at home to the grandparent who wants to age in place.
In other words, backyard cottages may not scream Manhattanization or
even necessarily smart growth, but implemented over a wide swatch of a
metro area they might achieve a similar end. Their potential seems even
greater in places trying to reduce their reliance on cars and promote
access to shops by walking or public transit. At the very least, Wegmann
believes, cottages should be part of the broader conversation about the
changing shape of American cities.
"The premise that single-family house neighborhoods are, or should
be, frozen in amber is increasingly being questioned," he tells
Co.Design.
One place ripe for such development in Wegmman's mind is the East
Bay, an area just across the water from San Francisco that includes
parts of Berkeley, Oakland, and El Cerrito. Housing demand is enormous
in the Bay Area, but the city itself has become largely unaffordable.
Still, the East Bay has strong transit access and clear walkable
districts and enough density--at 11,700 people per square mile--to
facilitate a more urbanized growth pattern.
Recently, Wegmann and Berkeley colleague Karen Chapple evaluated what
life in the East Bay might look like in two different growth scenarios.
The first, based on a conventional infill strategy of buildings with
five or more units located around transit hubs, had the potential to add
roughly 7,900 housing units to the area. They estimate that, given the
recent pace of area development, building that much housing would take
anywhere from 18 to 43 years.
Next they looked at backyard cottages. Assuming a slight relaxation
of zoning regulations from the present--a shift in keeping with
California's broader sustainability goals--the East Bay could
accommodate nearly 8,700 cottages, Wegmann and Chapple report in the Journal of Urbanism. That's not only more than the conventional infill estimate but roughly 60% of the area's total housing goal by 2040.
The concept goes well beyond the theoretical realm of academia. East Bay-based New Avenue
specializes in helping single-family homeowners develop backyard
cottages or "accessory dwellings." (The company--billing itself as Uber
for contractors--connects clients with architects and developers in an
online forum while vetting project costs and timelines.) Founder Kevin
Casey says zoning laws that once prevented this type of development are
quickly changing to encourage it.
"Anywhere there's a growing economy and expensive housing, it makes
sense," Casey tells Co.Design. "The Bay Area is the most expensive real
estate in the market, so it's by default the most logical place to do
this." (Wegmann and Casey knew one another at Berkeley and remain
acquainted, but Wegmann claims no financial interest in the company.)
Casey says a backyard cottage takes about six months to build after
permitting (which can take anywhere from no time to a year). The costs
vary but generally fall within a range of $80,000 to $250,000. Casey
estimates that 82% of his clients have family members in mind for the
dwelling; some see the cottages as a good starter home for when their
children move back to the area, or a good retirement home for themselves
down the line, or maybe both.
The view of backyard cottages as a family safety net raises the
question of whether they'll truly inspire homeowners to drop the
isolated mindset that challenges urban density in the first place.
Zoning and local politics might prove bigger hurdles. Smart growth has vehement opponents,
and NIMBYs who see cottages as a threat to single-family neighborhoods
might do their best to block new regulations, too. Financing problems
also linger, especially since cottages don't receive mortgage advantages given to income-based developments.
Wegmann remains hopeful that backyard cottages can at least augment,
though certainly not replace, the conventional infill strategy of big
apartment buildings.
"My prediction is that we will continue to have structures that we
today call 'single-family houses' for centuries to come, but that
increasing numbers of them won't be occupied by single families, and
eventually the law will evolve to reflect changing attitudes," he says.
"Some of them will sprout cottages in their backyards. Of course, these
changes won't happen overnight."
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