GENTLE DENSITY: Bell Design Group’s concept for providing much-needed housing for the “missing middle” in a practical, contextual, and community-focused method.
GENTLE DENSITY
Bell Design Group in Los Angeles has developed the concept of “Gentle Density” to address the need for middle-income, affordable housing (the “missing middle”) by providing the desired housing typology directly into single-family urban and suburban neighborhoods.
BDG has studied sites in the Los Angeles metro area, on urban and suburban lots using a variety of zoning categories that permit anywhere between 6-8 units, including accessory units, aka the ADU. While much has been written about new “Small Lot” laws that allow up to 4 units of for-sale, single-family homes on a typical 5,000 SF lot, these developments are rarely used for affordable rental housing, with the small homes selling for upwards of $1 million apiece.
Besides zoning, the construction cost of building homes is also an obstacle to new housing of any type. Supply chains are still being rebuilt, and many construction workers were permanently lost to other industries following the 2008 financial crisis and have yet to return or be replaced. Using factory-produced housing is one way to reduce these “hard costs” as manufacturing housing, like any product, benefits from controlled production processes, automation and the general efficiency of scale that assembly lines create.
proposed Gentle Density concept for 8 studio units within a single-family neighborhood by Bell Design Group
Gentle density reflects natural growth patterns and provides a middle road between the excesses of single-family, private universe-building and the multi-family, vehicle-dump that is the inevitable result dense housing along traffic corridors that will be underserved by public transit for many decades yet to come. Such modest and incremental growth can lead us to better and more equitable neighborhoods sooner, particularly in suburban communities, where density runs thin but neighborly bonds run deep.
Do you have a small lot that could be beneficial to the community with this type of development? Interested in actionable ways to address the housing crisis? Contact us to discuss this concept further!
Utilizing current resources, Bell Design Group proposes a solution that places six to eight prefabricated studio units on a suburban lot (depending on the size of the lot). The idea is for the residents to become part of a community that helps the new neighbors grow and lead productive and successful lives. These units can be prefabricated with minimal site preparation to allow for less expensive hard costs.
While on the face of it, eight units does not seem like much, if established organically, i.e. every third block, this number quickly compounds. These low-income residences, being nestled within single-family tracts, could be absorbed more quickly and with less impact than the large, multi-family buildings typically clustered along commercial corridors, in well-meaning but problematic fulfilment of transit-oriented planning.
Proposed Gentle Density concept for 8 rental units on two levels within a single-family neighborhood by Bell Design Group.
Proposed Gentle Density concept for 8 manufactured units within a single-family neighborhood by Bell Design Group.