Is the single family skinny house pro-density?
Two 2-story skinny homes on a single 7500 7200 sq ft lot can be a pretty nice way to ‘up’ density without mucking with a neighborhood’s sustainability. These homes aren’t out of scale with their surroundings, they’ve got nice setbacks between one another, they double the density on these lots, and each one is more affordable than a megamansion.
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ummm… Can I have a front porch with that?
if you have an alley in back you probably can
“Two 2-story skinny homes on a single 7500 sq ft lot” would be a great start. Maybe eventally we can get back to how they built them 100 years ago - my skinny house is on a 3000 sq ft lot, which gives me room for a large back and front yard (with porch), a garage (if I ever get around to building one), and 2300sf of living space. I have plenty of space in my back yard for my dogs to run and play, and space for a garden. I can’t imagine a single family needing more than this, short of having more than 5 children and perhaps a horse.
I’m not sure how many 3000 sq ft lots you’ll find in single family zoned areas - SF is zoned for 5000, 7200, and 9600. I’m sure I’ll probably get some lashback for saying this, but a 3,000 sq ft SF zoning that supported 2-story skinny homes might be an interesting thing to look at in Seattle.
While the zoning is SF 5000, you will find that many lots in the close -in neighborhoods are smaller, and go down to 3000 sq. feet. http://web1.seattle.gov/dpd/dpdgisv2/mapviewer.aspx. use the “get parcel data” tool to find lot sizes.
Thanks Michael, on more of a macro scale - do you know which neighborhoods have smaller lots - I have a feeling that SF on Capitol Hill/Central District is smaller, but just curious if you have a quick list of those that do accomodate smaller sizes.
I am speaking mainly from my experience when I rented in Wallingford. But I think Eastlake, Queen Anne, Fremont, Ballard, U-District, Phinney, Greenlake, would likely have many small lots as well. These neighborhoods were all platted before zoning, and were built around street car lines. Lots were just smaller then. I am guessing you would find the same thing to be true in other “streetcar suburbs” in town. By the way, these neighborhoods also have lots of apartment buildings without any dedicated parking, and walkable neighborhood business districts. There may be a pattern here.
Yeah, I think there definitely is a pattern. I think this is kind of how neighborhoods who aren’t as dense would like to be developed. Transit, homes on skinnier lots, retail services, and apartments/condos that aren’t so car reliant.
Most of Wallingford, Ravenna and Bryant was platted with 25′ X 100′ lots and the original owners typically bought two lots and put their house in the middle straddling the platted lot line. You’ll often see an in-fill builder (like the guy on 35th) who is able to build on an original, platted 25′ X 100′ lot, which wasn’t encumbered by the original house, even though that 2500′ lot is substandard by today’s zoning.
We’re building two houses on 27th NE and NE 68th, on three 25 x 100′ lots, which was a similar scenario.
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These two houses are horrible examples– I would be aghast to have these things in my neighborhood. They’re nothing but garages with a bit of bland-looking house on top. I expect to see development like this in an utterly car-centric burb like Monroe; whereas in established neighborhoods like QA, I can’t think of anything sadder or ruder than making your parking garage the centerpiece of your home’s facade. A block full of buildings like these is a block I’d never want to stroll past.
Just to put the buildings in context, they’re in North Seattle on a major North-South arterial.
I’ll bet these neighbors weren’t aghast despite the prominent garages:
http://flickr.com/photos/d2digital/1340213711/
All it would take is some creative styling to make these two north Seattle homes look much more interesting and attractive. And if you could get rid of the sideyard setback, they’d actually be nice sized homes.
I agree, I bet the neighbors weren’t aghast. And you can hardly blame them for having garages for their cars (and they’re just one car garages too).
This area does have bus routes around, so I wouldn’t be surprised if the people here used their vehicles less than those located further away from the city.
The required garage and driveway results in the loss of an on-street parking space. How about no garage or driveway, and the homeowner parks on the street in front of the house? You would get a nice entrance, a front yard, maybe a tree or two, and a bigger house. Get ride of the side yard setbacks, as recommended above, and you could use some of that space for more house or more yard in front or back. That narrow slot between the houses supports little greenery or useful space.
On a related note, we complain about townhomes taking away greenery on a lot, but we also insist on laws that require the developer to devote almost all of the ground level to garage or driveway. We have choices here if we stop making auto storage one of the highest priorities in the land use code.
When I lived on N Queen Anne in the 90s they shortplatted a nearby residential lot (the house had burned down) and built two houses on it. The houses were so close together (about an eighth of an inch) they used a laser tool to prove they were separate.
This is actually kind of silly- air is a very bad insulator, building a common brick wall would do much more to improve privacy. In a typical NYC brownstone you never hear your neighbors.
Yeah, building two unique homes an 1/8th of an inch from each other is silly.
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