Planning cities and the way that we comfortably live in them is often a pull between many things. From creating affordable housing for all, enhancing community facilities and amenities, and designing walkable neighborhoods, all aspects of urban design have trade-offs, or do they? While there are many reasons why cities are becoming increasingly more expensive, dense, and less pedestrian-friendly, one of the key drivers behind the increase in unaffordability has to do with the way that outdated zoning codes drive the lack of available housing that they regulate

Enter the term “middle housing”, which has been a topic of conversation, both in the sense that people who are categorized as middle-income households have historically struggled to find housing and as a descriptor of the form and size of the types of housing that many urban planners and designers want to build. Instead of the traditional single-family detached homes that define urban sprawl, or the high rise towers that define our most dense cities, there’s a distinct residential architecture that is quite literally the “middle” of the two- most commonly built to three or four stories tall and designed in a way that helps make more walkable neighborhoods more walkable.