Cohousing-L Mailing List: Infill to upgrade a neighborhood

[Sharon Villines (sharon]

One example the Missing Middle discusses is rehabbing several small houses or 
duplexes in an already built neighborhood. It is very common in cities to have 
a rather large neighborhood of identical houses built at the same time that is 
now on the fritz and multiple homes are for sale. Challenged cities have blocks 
of these. 

The economies of rehabbing identical floor plans of the same size would use the 
savings of infill vs new construction and by doing several buildings at the 
same time have the economies of a large project rather than several small ones 
done at different times for different individual households.

Obviously requires more coordination but all the units don’t have to be done at 
the same time. People can move in in waves. And the effect of the new 
households would be a benefit to the whole neighborhood. Our neighborhood has 
changed drastically from the time we moved in. We were the first new building 
in a very long time, and it was a few years before there were more. But now it 
is whole new neighborhood.

Sharon
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Sharon Villines
Takoma Village Cohousing, Washington DC
http://www.takomavillage.org