The New American Dream

For generations, the American Dream has been closely tied to a detached house on an individual lot. That dream was shaped by a particular period in American history, supported by new highways, inexpensive land, mortgage financing, and public policies that made suburban homeownership possible for millions of households.

It also defined the way we live. Homes moved farther from work, shopping, and daily needs. Driving became part of everyday life. Neighborhoods spread out, and many of the casual interactions that once happened on a stoop, sidewalk, corner store, or walk home became less common.

For many however, the appeal of living in proximity has increasingly revived. Proximity to shops, restaurants, parks, schools, make up high walkability scores that drive up housing values. Despite a major setback due to a global pandemic, urban living and vibrant neighborhoods have increasingly appealed to many. While downtown retail increasing suffers from digital markets, visiting a local store or restaurant reminds people that running into or meeting up with someone we know warms our day.

While walkable neighborhoods have significantly grown as a quality of life factor, fewer housing options have made such lifestyle a privilege or luxury. In many cities around the world, attainable homeownership for famailies coexist with abundance of housing options. A home does not necessarily mean owning a detached building and the land surrounding it. Homes can be stacked, adjacent, and connected. A yard can be shared. A staircase can serve several homes. A vestibule can be a place for a conversation with a neighbor.

Homes can share their shadows.

The New American Dream explores how we can hold on to the things people value about having a home of their own—stability, privacy, ownership, family space, and some outdoor space—while making room for more proximity in how we live. In a post-pandemic world where the socioeconomic benefits of living in urban environments, working in person, or remotely together, reinvigorates the notion of living in vibrant neighborhoods in close proximity.

Urban literature has discussed and emphasized the 15 minute neighborhood, reclaiming streets for people, dense vibrant streets, and the economic benefits of living in proximity to where we shop, work, and receive our daily needs. Recent regulatory changes in California, and throughout North America, removed zoning barriers to building more housing to make this lifestyle more possible.

What the New American Dream turns to is how the small multi-unit building, the middle housing, contribute to the tangible benefits of proximity. Living in proximity to your neighbors in the same building, promotes the culture of connectivity, it reduces the privacy bubbles around us, but reminds us the sense of belonging comes from seeing our neighbor leave their house together. A shared open space inside the building allows for children to grow their independence and confidence at an earlier age, while supervision from “eyes on the yard” are made possible by through flats with windows both to the street and the yard.

Middle Housing

There is a lot of space between a detached house and a large apartment building.

Duplexes, fourplexes, courtyard apartments, flats, rowhouses, and small multi-unit buildings once filled much more of that space. They allow several households to share the cost of increasingly expensive urban land while still living in homes that can feel distinct and personal.

California has made significant progress making these housing types legal again. ADUs have gone from a cottage industry to a common way of adding housing. Recent zoning reforms have opened more neighborhoods to duplexes, lot splits, and small multi-unit buildings. But changing zoning does not mean these homes will get built.

Our systems for financing, construction, insurance, permitting, and homeownership still work much better for a single house at one end and a larger professionally developed building at the other. A four-, six-, or eight-unit project sits awkwardly in between. The project may be legal and still be too difficult or expensive to finance and build.

This is the space Shared Shadow is interested in.

How do we make small multi-unit buildings easier to build and own? How can they work for families and provide a meaningful path to homeownership? What needs to change in financing, permitting, construction, insurance, and ownership structures for this scale of housing to become ordinary again?

The New American Dream begins with the idea that we can make room for more homes without giving up the qualities that make a place feel like home.

Ideas that inform this work

Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities
Kenneth T. Jackson, Crabgrass Frontier
William H. Whyte, The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces
Dolores Hayden, Building Suburbia
Janette Sadik-Khan and Seth Solomonow, Streetfight
Jeff Speck, Walkable City
Eric Klinenberg, Palaces for the People
Carlos Moreno, The 15-Minute City
Jenny Schuetz, Fixer-Upper