"Lets face it: humans are gregarious —we like to live around others. We also have a desire—and perhaps a need—for personal space. Sometime in the last generation, however, we became so charmed with the dream of a ‘house of one’s own’ that we overshot our desire for privacy, leaving us marooned on our own personal island in a sea of houses."—Ross Chapin
Cottages don't seem like a real stretch in a Southern California beach community that purportedly values its traditions. But where are the developments for this kind of building? What is stopping this? Is it greed, nimby terror of density, lack of imagination, building codes or something else responsible? It is time to bring cottages back into a beach community.
Ross Chapin Architects is one of the well-known names for this genre and is credited with the term "pocket neighborhoods." Within the Pocket Neighborhoods blog is the following:
In essence, pocket neighborhoods are about nearby neighbors sharing and caring for common ground.
These communities don’t have to be built from scratch, or take much money at all. Section Four in the Pocket Neighborhoods book features a story about two subdivisions where residents have taken down their backyard fences to create a safe play-space for their kids. Another story tells about a suburban cul-de-sac where neighbors regularly take over the street for summer potlucks. In Baltimore and Los Angeles, residents along urban alleys have reclaimed their access lane as a shared commons, complete with BBQs, picnic tables and container gardens. And all over America, nearby neighbors are coming together to plan community gardens in vacant lots and undeveloped street right-of-ways.
New pocket neighborhoods can take the form of clustered homes around a garden in a variety of configurations in small towns or suburban settings. In urban settings, pocket neighborhoods are likely to be attached or stacked apartments opening onto a shared courtyard. This is because the higher value of urban land will force denser development. Cohousing is another form of pocket neighborhood that is becoming more common, but that will be for another blog post.
Style is not what matters; homes could take the form of Craftsman cottages, contemporary sheds, or urban lofts. Nor is location — suburban, urban, small town. It’s all about the essential pattern: having a relatively small number of neighbors gathering around shared space.
