A. EXCLUSIVELY RESIDENTIAL BUILDINGS

1. Apartment House: Conventional apartment buildings except that its parking is behind or below the building. These are preferable as vertical entry buildings (2, 4 or 6 units per floor) rather than as continuous hallway buildings, as the scale of the smaller building yields a better urban fabric more compatible with houses and other mixed use. The trick here is to avoid the requirement of contiguous clustering of the type in the minimum of hundreds of units.

2. Double Decker: Buildings of two apartments, stacked above the other. One may be a primary dwelling and the other an income producing property. At corner locations each can have its own entry frontage. These were common as self-sustaining affordable housing for immigrants.

3. Duplex or Triplex: Two or three small units sharing a lot, each with its yard. These may be attached or detached, and beside or behind each other. These exist, as income producing properties, usually illegally, throughout poor neighborhoods.

4. House and Townhouses with an Ancillary Building: The conventional types with the addition of a detached outbuilding or attached back building to its rear. These premises are available for home occupations or as an ancillary rental units. Kentlands and Seaside have quite a few. They generate up to $900 a month if they have a kitchen and separate bedroom at about 400 sq ft.

The trick for types 2, 3 and 4 is to make the income of the rental unit intrinsic to the mortgage qualification guidelines.

5. Greenfronting Townhouses: Conventional attached types on small lots with the addition of a shared enfronting square, green or close in condominium association. A variant to the open space is a shared area within the inner block, usually a playground. The trick here is to have the common open space rated in the appraisal.

6. Bungalow Court: Small, detached, 1-2 bedroom cottages each with their own yard. These are usually developed in depth from the street in clusters of 4 to 8. They share a common walkway and sometimes also a common parking pad, forcing a condominium association. This is an excellent type for starter and retirement segments. The trick here is to establish guidelines for houses which do not require the 2.5 bath, 3 br with garage convention.

7. The Inn: A small hotel ranging from 30 to 80 rooms. Many towns do not have lodging available because the minimum standards are in the hundreds. This is absurd, other advanced nations including Canada and Australia have small hotels. It is important to note that some excellent urban locations are too small for large hotels. These inns do not need to have restaurants and other costly services as the rest of the town would provide them in seamless proximity. The trick here is to get the size down.

PRIMARILY RESIDENTIAL MIXED-USE BUILDINGS

8. Flex Apartment House: An otherwise conventional apartment building with the first story available as a commercial space, either independently or in association with the apartment above (via an internal stair). Columbus Realty has built these in Dallas and Post Properties is building them in Atlanta.

9. Loft Apartment House: An unconventional apartment building with every apartment available for residential and/or commercial use. The ceilings must be taller to permit the commercial depth (a distance from windows greater than that necessary for a residential unit). These are being built and renovated in downtown Raleigh and elsewhere.

10. Flex Rowhouse: Rowhouses with the first story available as a commercial space, either independently leased or in association with the residential unit above. Jonathan Rose with Calthorpe has built a good number in Santa Fe. These tend towards an office park look. Seaside has built many of these and Kentlands is about to do so, tending towards a main street look. A rear alley or parking lot accommodates the additional parking requirement. It is possible that the current flex warehouse concept can be adapted with minimal fuss to mixed use.

11. Flex House: Conventional houses with the front of the building (at the position of the conventional garage) available as a commercial space or as an ancillary rental unit. Kentlands will probably build some soon. The rear alley accommodates the additional parking requirement.

C. PRIMARILY COMMERCIAL MIXED-USE BUILDINGS

The following definitions are taken from The Shopping Center Development Handbook of the Urban Land Institute and the National Association of Convenience Stores. The combination of tenants they recommend must be emulated as they are highly studied and valid. The transformation to New Urbanist practice involves the location of the parking to the rear and the provision of apartments and offices above the retail or in close proximity. There are several other types in the U.L.I. conception of the world, but they cannot be absorbed into traditional neighborhood urbanism and must be relegated to districts

12. Corner Store: The equivalent of the N.A.C.S. Convenience Store except that most of the parking to the rear and that there should be a residential unit above. The corner store is the principal amenity of a TND... the equivalent of a clubhouse for conventional suburban development. It should not be considered a profit center, but a part of the infrastructure. There is one at Haile Plantation and there was a very successful one at Belmont which was unfortunately closed by the building department when its temporary permit expired.

13. Main Street Grouping: The equivalent of the U.L.I. Convenience Center. Providing for the sale of personal services and convenience goods. It has a typical G.L.A. of about 20,000 sq ft. It is not anchored by a supermarket but by some other type of personal/convenience service like a minimarket.

14. Town Center Grouping: The equivalent of a U.L.I.Neighborhood Center. Providing for the sale of convenience goods (foods, drugs and sundries) and personal services ( dry cleaning, barbering, shoe repair) as well as restaurants, for the day to day living needs of the immediate neighborhoods. Its built around the supermarket as the principal tenant. The Town Center has a typical G.L.A. of 30,000 to 100,000.

15. Downtown Grouping: The equivalent of the U.L.I. Regional Center. Providing general merchandise (apparel, books, home furnishings as well as a range of services and recreational facilities such as a multiplex cinema) as well as restaurants. It is built around one or two full-line department stores of not less than 75,000 sq ft. The Downtown has a G.L.A. ranging from 300,000 to 850,000. The department store may be an archaic requirement; cinemas and smaller national retailers seeming to be able to do the job of anchoring. Mizner Park manages to do it without the department stores as does Colorado Avenue in Pasadena.

E. EXCLUSIVELY COMMERCIAL BUILDINGS

16. Avenue Office Building: A conventional office building enfronting a mixed-use thoroughfare rather than associated to a specialized office park. The parking is relegated to the rear of the building. This building has the capability of being seamlessly connected to other, supportive, building types. There are many still-successful historic examples, Palmer Square in Princeton is one of the best. Mizner Park integrates an office component.

17 Urban Villa: A building similar to a large house, able to accommodate a wide variety of uses, including conventional apartments, single-room occupancy units (the old boarding house), bed & breakfast inn, small professional office, restaurant. The model is the old, converted mansion of the inner city. This is a useful and resilient building type which can evolve organically. Since it is small, if the parking is hidden to the rear, the Urban Villa is compatible with single-family houses. How do you explain something so flexible to the lending institutions, let alone the secondary mortgage market?

PS I recommend that these types above be presented with an emphasis on the similarity to current conventional types rather than on how innovative and different they are.

Duany Plater Zyberk & Company.
Copyright © 1998. All rights reserved.
Revised: March 26, 2002.