If there’s one thing I’m glad to see, it’s not just nonprofits or membership groups working with for-profits to execute their vision, but green organizations working with developers to build attainably-priced green housing.

It started with Live Green, a green-oriented membership organization based on providing green business discounts to its members, and Taurus Development Group, a woman-run real estate development firm with a twenty-year ecological track record. Both of these entities,

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That’s the headline for a recent USA Today article, as developers go smaller in response to emerging generations of buyers who have a fresher vision of the American Dream than previous ones. “The trend is here to stay”, says Michael Newman, president and CEO of Golub & Co., an international real estate development and investment firm. “In this economy, people still want to be in cool places, and they’ll trade down size for location.“

Ho do developers compensate for less living area? Open

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For many, the image that first pops into people’s heads who have heard of cohousing is one of boomer hippies sharing communal meals every Sunday in their housing complex. The thing is, it’s a fairly accurate assessment for many of the only 110 cohousing projects in the U.S., and while it’s far from desirable for most people, there are some good lessons from its creation process, which is very relatable to crowdsourced placemaking. Here’s one Brooklyn story:

When a plan to build 40

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While we may be familiar with city policies promoting car-free living, what are the examples in the built world?

That’s where you need to visit the Moda condominiums in the Belltown district of Seattle, Washington. Moda is a model application of truly attainably-priced housing via reducing housing size and eliminating parking spaces. The evidence:

- 83 units have no parking at all, which are $30,000 less than those with parking.
- The units start at $149,950, almost a third of the median

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It’s that time of year again, to profile the apartments that best invigorate their homes through color, in Apartment Therapy’s annual Fall Colors Contest.

Shown here are the ‘Final Four‘ contestants, using kitchens for comparison. Here’s the inspiration and color tips from each of them:

The East (top image) - “After living with white walls for one year we painted a bedroom wall red and quickly realized the rest of the house needed color. Don’t be afraid to use bold colors that make a

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There’s an emerging market for green housing and transportation, and in the Bay Area, California, both the private and public sectors are taking leads to accommodate them.

At The Uptown apartments in Oakland, developer Forest City Enterprises offers home buyers free annual membership ($25) to the car-sharing service Zipcar, free annual public transit passes and access to bikes. Developer Rick Holliday offers a free bike with every unit at his Pacific Cannery Lofts development, plus a bike

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One of the most frequently asked questions I receive is related to readers seeking to buy homes that fit the vibe of what this site is all about. For years, I really had no answer for them. Finally, Brent Roberts, who worked for one of the most innovative, creative developers in the world, Streuver Brothers (see triple bottom line industrial loft redevelopments here and here), decided to strike out on his own and suggested providing that very service.

Long story short, Brent committed to the

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You may be noticing a lot of bicycle posts lately, reflecting a trend of low cost, low energy, low maintenance transportation as gas prices have reached a new plateau. The same is happening for housing, as cities and developers partner to build homes at price points (and thus sizes) that those in the workforce (ie from teachers to police officers) can actually afford.

San Francisco leads the way in this regard, first with attainably-priced Cubix Yerba Buena and its efficiencies, and now a

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Perhaps too many people buying homes they couldn’t afford wasn’t the problem behind the Wall Street collapse, but a symptom. The real problem may be that there are too many homes out on the market that people could never afford in the first place. In other words, the average U.S. American can’t afford $300,000 for a home, as is the going rate in many cities. So rather than lend out more money to buy homes people can’t afford, that banks can’t back, perhaps the real solution is addressing the

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Following the announcement of a green home crowdsourcing program in July 2008, Taurus Enterprise Group, led by president Gail Montplaisir, has agreed to see if the building pictured above can be redeveloped and crowdsourced into green condos that creatives can truly afford. We’re not talking about ‘affordability’ in quotations, we’re talking about what first-time home buyers, those with average salaries or even recent graduates can literally afford to pay a month in order to buy their own

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The median home price in San Francisco is $749,000, so being able to buy anything new at a third of that price is noteworthy, especially if it’s in one of the most desirable neighborhoods in the city.

Enter Cubix Yerba Buena in SoMa (South of Market), an eight-story building of 98 condos starting at $279,000. The key to affordability is not in government subsidies, but in size - each of the condominiums range from 250 to 350 s.f. It’s the U.S. version of the UK’s iPad, or the housing version

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Buying an attainably-priced green home is a no brainer for most creatives given the option, however finding one is comparable to a needle in a haystack. So, in the District of Columbia the GreenHomes DC program is launching an opportunity for prospective home buyers (and renters) to crowdsource their own affordable green place to live.

In partnership with a sponsoring developer per specific project, GreenHomes DC is a joint venture between Green DC Realty and CoolTown Beta Communities. 

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Not to be outdone by the smallest coolest apartments in the U.S. brought to you by Apartment Therapy, here are the international winners:

First place (topmost image) - Nicolas’ Mini Loft, Lille, France, 630 s.f. “I keep things that are useful or important to me, and get rid of the rest : no extra room to accumulate! You feel lighter when you don’t own too much stuff!...“

Second place - Aad’s Compact Dwelling (Suitable for Laziness), Rotterdam, The Netherlands, 624 s.f. “This particular

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It’s that time of year again to check out the winners of Apartment Therapy’s Small Cool 2008 contest to discover the smallest (under 850 s.f.), coolest apartments in the U.S.

First place (topmost image) - Tony and Hilary’s 3 in 1 Studio, Fort Greene, Brooklyn, NY, 460 s.f. “Living here as a couple with a cat, we have enough space to store everything we need without sacrificing comfort.“

Second place - Jordan’s Ordo Ab Chao, Los Angeles, CA, 412 s.f. apartment rental. Note the office nook in

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We hear a lot of buzz about the popularity of people working at home, but how prevalent is it?  Here’s a snapshot via answering a few questions:

How many U.S. Americans are working at home? 28 million at least part time in 2006.
Is that number growing? That’s a 10% increase from the previous year and a 40% increase from 2002.
Do U.S. Americans have home offices?  7 out of 10 have offices or designated work stations, a 112% increases since 2000.
How important are home offices in new homes? 

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Imagine if half of all your employees suddenly couldn’t afford to live conveniently near your workplace? Many of them would leave rather than spend two hours of their daily lives in traffic or transit. Of course you’d replace them, but you wouldn’t be attracting the same level of talent, then naturally, your customers would gradually realize the same.

Thus local businesses today are advocating for more ‘workforce housing’ - housing that is attainable to working families earning between

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If you live in an apartment and you care about good design, it’d be a shame if you’ve never been to Apartment Therapy’s 3-million-unique-visitors-a-month site, featuring great apartment design examples via several illustrated blog entries a day.

Being a regular at the site, one can fathom the criticism following the site’s founder and HGTV design expert Maxwell Gillingham-Ryan for not having pictures in his first Apartment Therapy book. He didn’t make the same mistake in his second book

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There is not a desirable city that exists that doesn’t have a lack of attainably-priced housing, and it’s been covered pretty extensively. Smaller homes have been one of the most logical answers, and developers are starting to agree to the point investors have termed the smallest end of these offerings…

Microhousing is defined as very small one-two bedroom units, 300 to 500 square feet, with an emphasis on shared amenities like fitness facilities, party rooms with kitchens, libraries, laundry

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If you’re looking for color inspiration when it comes to home interior design, it’ll be tough to find a better source than the annual Apartment Therapy Fall Colors 2007 contest.  Apartment Therapy itself is one of the best daily resources for apartment design.

This year’s winner hails from a couple in Chinatown, Los Angeles. See a full range of rather stellar photos here. From the home owners, “We have never seen white as the starting point to develop a color scheme…in our apartment, which is

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Every once in a while it’s important to show a bit of beauty in an urban infill development, even though it might not be attainably priced. The ultimate goal of course, is to combine beauty with attainability.

One of the development partners, the I’on Group, specializes in building beautiful homes. The other development partner, Civic Square, builds beautiful public spaces into their projects, “that contribute to the ideal of a more successful public realm, whether in the form of a beautiful

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In the industrial age people had a choice of either a mass-produced suburban home or a mass-produced apartment. In the knowledge age where

individual expression as a community is the norm, these lucky residents in Amsterdam were able to fulfill that notion.

...and lucky is right, for people had to win a lottery for the right to buy one of 60 ‘free parcels’, as in ‘free to design their own building’. As you can see in the image above, it shows, and compared to the rest of the 2500-unit Borneo

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There’s more interesting twists to this story than you may first think. The post-Lakers career Magic Johnson is known for in the business world is bringing urban retail to economically-disinvested neighborhoods.

Unfortunately, his somewhat industrial economy approach has been to do so with clusters of national chains like TGIF’s and Starbucks (see his website for immediate evidence), not the most effective means of supporting the local economy and culture (as otherwise indicated in the top

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In Michigan the housing market is ‘absolutely horrendous’, according to Geoff Greeneisen, VP of local developer, the Terra Land Group. So they’ve decided to supply what has been one of the strongest, most ignored demands in the market - attainable, entry-level downtown housing for Generation X, Generation Y, and “black-collar creatives.”�

“These younger buyers are just what a community with a downtown needs. When a place to live costs a great deal more, he says, the buyers end up being older

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Each year the innovative folks at Apartment Therapy award the smallest, coolest apartments across the country, and now around the world. Now when they say smallest, they really do mean smallest (ie some winning pads are 300 s.f.), but they also hold true to being utterly cool as well.

First place (top image), London - This tiny 300 s.f. residence won for its adaptability to different uses, moods. The kitchen and work areas can actually be concealed! Notice how the tops of the chairs fit right

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What are the words often associated with Beta Generation writer Jack Kerouac? Free spirit, bohemian, unconventional, counter-culture...

It was only natural that he should provide the DNA for the 60 urban residences to rise from a one-acre lot in Denver surrounded by railyards and vacant industrial buildings dating back to the 1880s, now officially named the Jack Kerouac Lofts. Endorsed by the Kerouac family, it’s not surprising that the developer is Urban Neighborhoods Inc., founded by

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