Revenge of the Small

Portland, Seattle, and Vancouver are creating strategies to encourage the development of modest, more affordable houses

by Karrie Jacobs

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Seattle architect Dave Sarti purchased a neighbor's backyard for $35,000 and built a house there for $180,000.

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Portland, Oregon. Seattle, Washington. Vancouver, British Columbia. In these three Pacific North­west cities, the progressive power of urban planning is taken very seriously, and concepts like livability and sustainability dominate the local civic culture to such an extent that to visit all three in rapid succession, as I did in October, is to drop in on another country. It’s not the United States or Canada, but a more highly evolved combination of the two.

In each city I was impressed by major developments, dramatic projects that promised to refresh the urban landscape in conspicuous ways. In Seattle, where the OMA–designed library represents a watershed moment in public architecture, the new civic landmark nearing completion occupies a nine-acre multilevel site at the north end of the downtown waterfront. Designed by New York firm Weiss/Manfredi, the Seattle Art Museum’s Olympic Sculpture Park opens in January. In Portland a massive mixed-use high-rise development is emerging on a brownfield site on the Wil-lamette River waterfront south of downtown. It’s linked to the rest of the city by a new streetcar line, and in January it will be connected by a spectacular aerial tramway designed by Angélil/Graham/Pfenninger/Scholl Architecture. Meanwhile, in Vancouver the megaproject that is lining the perimeter of the downtown peninsula with residential high-rises is nearly complete. And while I heard some grumbling about the faux town houses placed at the bases of many of the towers, I thought some of the newest high-rise areas—in particular, a spot along Coal Harbour where the northwest corner of downtown bumps into Stanley Park—provided as good a model of a twenty-first-century urban neighborhood as I’ve seen.

But what I found most interesting on this trip was not the landmark developments but smaller ­changes in the residential fabrics of the cities. All three are wrestling with the problem of affordable housing and have begun to encourage, or at least allow, the construction of well-designed small houses. While McMansion bans have been proposed in many cities—and have succeeded in a few—what Portland and Vancouver, and to some extent Seattle, are doing is more difficult and more interesting. They’re inventing mechanisms that say yes to small instead of no to big.

Recently Portland and Vancouver established zoning and design guidelines to encourage the development of smaller houses, as long as they meet exacting design criteria. A new program in Vancouver that falls under the mayor’s overall policy of “eco-density” encourages the reconfig­uration of lots in certain single-family districts. In Portland a new set of ordinances and guidelines seeks to promote “skinny houses,” intended to fit lots less than 36 feet wide.

It was in Seattle, however, where I saw the best small house. Dave Sarti, who co-taught a design-build studio at the University of Washington last year, had constructed an 800-square-foot house with a 160-square-foot double-height attached workshop. It’s a sweet fire-engine-red box planted in the backyard of a Central District home. I walked down the grassy driveway past an unremarkable blue traditional home and was surprised to see this Bauhaus cube where another yard might have a swing set. The red HardiPanel siding made it look very much of the moment, but the efficiency of design and small size were reminiscent of the workers’ houses that Gropius and his contemporaries built in Europe between the wars.

Although the Central District is dominated by old single-family homes on large lots, Sarti says that much of it is zoned for multifamily devel­opment. So as the traditionally low-income, once predominantly black area gentrifies, the single-family homes are often replaced with town houses. Sarti, however, bought someone’s backyard for $35,000 and built his house there for about $180,000. And this unorthodox maneuver was perfectly legal under existing zoning.