Author(s): Jos茅 Ibarra & Leyuan Li
Denver has a critical housing shortage in the United States, with the city having a deficit of approximately 70,000 units and its residents struggling with housing affordability, gentrification, and homelessness. These issues are exacerbated by the predominant single-family housing model that is favored in this and many other American cities. With less land for building houses and with soaring prices for rent and mortgages, low- and moderate-income households have been displaced, which has diminished housing equity by intensi-fying the existing social and racial segregation. Moreover, an insistence on the idealized single-family housing model has championed the privatization of public spaces within its territory, such as swimming pools and gardens, attenuating the advantage of sharing spaces and resources among a more diverse constituency, such as child-free couples and multi generational households. With less flexible arrangements, the current housing model fails to engage a wider variety of living demands, creating more barriers to expand the measures of affordability and collectivity celebrated by the diverse dwellers of contemporary cities. This paper looks at different housing typologies found in Denver, proposing possible updates to the existing framework of 鈥淢issing Middle鈥 housing that create new domestic forms that engage the diverse constituents of growing American cities.
Volume Editors
ISBN
978-1-944214-49-4