Townhomes with setbacks, usable driveways, and they’re neighborhood-friendly? Where am I?

If you answered, ‘not Seattle WA’ then you’re right. (And extra bonus points if you answered Victoria BC). Now, I’m not going to say all the buildings I saw in Victoria were beautiful -but for the most part whether they were old, new or middle-aged they looked like they each fit into the neighborhood.

Unfortunately I didn’t get to make it into any of the units but did walk around quite a bit and I was really impressed with what Victoria has done to create a really dense, walkable collection of neighborhoods. The setbacks, the creativity in the different types of buildings and the focus on landscaped open space are good lessons for us.

• Victoria mandates does a good job of managing the minimum size of multi-dwelling parking spaces so that they’re actually usable by the people who live there.
• Victoria also protects privacy by varying setbacks based on use. Windowless walls (or windows of non-habitable rooms) can be closer to neighbors than habitable rooms with windows.
• And Victoria avoids the wooden fence problems and exposed ugly parking spaces that Seattle townhomes suffer from. They require surface parking to be screened by a landscaped berm at least 1m (~3ft) in height.

The more I think about it, the problem Seattle is facing isn’t with whether something is zoned multi-family or single-family— it’s just that the zoning code which determines what can be built does a really poor job of taking the sustainablity and health of a neighborhood into consideration. 

It doesn’t make sense why we don’t open up single-family zoning in Seattle for creative duplexes/triplexes, but yet we make it super easy to build 35′ tall megamansions. And it is really strange that we give very little consideration to ensuring nice transitions between adjoining properties - why not require multifamily and megahouse developers to give the neighboring property a break by creating nice setbacks and privacy screens? 
Nice street level entry for this corner townhome in Victoria’s James Bay.  

Okay, not the most beautiful, but I bet the owners here can at least pull their cars into their garages. 

The setback creates nice open space for the residents and doesn’t jam them up against the sidewalk.

I liked this - three story homes against the street corner and then two-stories where the townhomes were neighboring single family homes. Also, the nice wide driveway opened up some pretty nice balconies for the homes on the right.