Ordinary Homes of the United States

Time period: 1890s-1920s, 1960s-1980s, 2020s to present day Location: Suburbs nationwide The classic US fourplex is a 2-story building with four apartments: two upstairs, two downstairs. First becoming popular when streetcars (also known as trolleys or trams) made suburbs possible, the fourplex offers choice for households who want to get out of the crowded city but can't afford or don't need a standalone house. Cross section of a fourplex . Before streetcars, city dwellers lived within walking distance of the city center. Few people could afford horses, so walking speed limited the physical size of cities. Adults walk at 2-3 miles per hour, which meant the largest ancient and medieval cities were just a couple miles wide. When population grew, cities would grow upwards, replacing houses with townhouses and tenements, 3-7 stories tall, built right next to each other with walls touching. Streetcars were invented in 1887 and could go much faster. Even with time waiting at traffi...

Time period: 2010s Location: Denver, especially the neighborhood east of Sloan Lake. Cleveland and other cities with Form Based zoning also have them. Also known as: Sideways-facing town homes or fraux homes (combining the words faux and rowhome) Since the 1990s, Denver has been one of the fastest growing cities in the United States, going from a population of 467,000 to 715,000 over the last 30 years. Many Californians (and others) were attracted by Colorado's lower housing costs, clean air, and access to hiking and other outdoors activities. The tech industry also expanded, bringing lots of high paying jobs. With that came a demand for housing, especially large homes desired by the upper middle class. In 2010, Denver updated its zoning code to a Form Based Code (FBC) to encourage more "missing middle" housing - a range of density between detached houses and large apartment buildings. They were the one of the big cities in the US to use an FBC. The intent was to get rowh...

  Time period: 20th century to present day Location: Suburbs In places that allow them, Accessory Dwelling Units are a way to have more than one home on a lot that is zoned only for one regular full-size home. ADUs are a second, smaller home (typically studio, 1-bedroom, or 2-bedroom) on the same property as a full size house. They're also called accessory apartments, secondary units, in-law suites, and granny flats. Hawaii calls them Ohana dwellings. In zoning and building codes, accessory uses are minor uses that are allowed as part of a larger project, even if the zoning or occupancy type does not normally allow it. An example of an accessory use is the manager's office of an apartment building, which is allowed in a residential zone even though it's an office use. ADU's are a similar regulatory reform to allow two homes on a single family lot, without changing it to duplex zoning. Examples of types of ADUs. Each type of ADU has advantages and disadvantages. Detach...

  Time period: 2020s and onwards Location: California California state law allows a single-family home to become three homes: 1. The main house, which can be whatever size allowed by zoning 2.  An attached or detached Accessory Dwelling Unit (ADU). Can be any size, cities must allow at least 800 square feet (enough for a 2-bedroom, 3 if you squeeze it) 3. An attached Junior Accessory Dwelling Unit (JADU), of up to 500 square feet. Example of a house with a Junior ADU and a regular ADU on a 5,000 square foot, 50'x100' lot.  Total of 3,800 square feet of living space with 3 homes with a total of 7 bedrooms (4 in house, 2 in ADU, 1 in Junior ADU). While California state law as of 2022 also allows up to 4 homes ( double duplex ) using Senate Bill 9, the ADU+JADU route is currently more popular, for two reasons: First, fees and code requirements are lower for ADUs. Second, many cities have put up barriers to using SB9 - this is in the process of being corrected by cleanup ...

Examples shown are smaller buildings located in urban areas. Group living at suburban and rural colleges have larger yards and more parking. The largest sororities are found in the South, and have over 40,000 square feet of indoor space and are located on 1-acre lots. Time period: Mid/late 1800s to present Location: College towns Four types of student group living, separated by gender or economic system Key features - Located in clusters close to college campuses - Shared common spaces and bathrooms - In addition to residential uses, may also contain study halls and space for parties From the 1600s to the mid 1800s, college education in the United States was rare, limited to small institutions established by churches to train ministers. Liberal arts education was added in the 1800s. Enrollment was small - a couple dozen to a couple hundred students per college. In the mid 1800s, as the country grew and started to industrialize, there was a movement to expand higher education as farmin...

  Time period:1990s to present Location: Washington, DC metropolitan area, also found in other places. Twice the density, half the land cost: a 2-story townhouse on top of another 2-story townhouse Key features - Family sized housing, with 3+ bedrooms. - Marketed as townhouses, cheaper than regular townhouses . - Also known as a "2 over 2" Rowhouses and townhouses historically have been a popular housing type in the Mid-Atlantic region, stretching from New Jersey down to Northern Virginia.   The stacked townhouse is the latest version of this type.   The Washington DC are has become one of the fastest growing and wealthiest metropolitan areas in the country in the last 20-30 years, boosted by the growing role of the federal government. Many businesses that are heavily affected by federal regulations and/or reliant on federal subsidies, such as healthcare, defense, and telecommunications, have decided to have their headquarters in or near DC, even if manufacturing ta...