It is one of the great ironies of technology: As it enables unprecedented connections among people and cultures around the globe, it also tends to erode our connections closer to home.
Automobiles and aircraft bridge distances between faraway places, and electronic communication renders miles almost meaningless. Yet the more we keep to our cars and computers, the less we tend to connect locally to others in our everyday encounters.
Many suburban homes reinforce this trend toward isolation, with their oversized, up-front garages acting as a barrier between the occupants and those on the outside. Inside, theater rooms, showcase kitchens and well- appointed master suites encourage an inward-turning lifestyle.
Street life, in any meaningful sense, just doesn’t happen.
More than ever, urban planners and designers are starting to calculate the societal costs of these kinds of housing developments, where individual agendas and privacy issues seem always to trump public life. They see a corrosive effect on neighborhoods and a vague sense of estrangement — a disconnectedness that thwarts our natural social inclinations. They recognize that housing that encourages us to keep to ourselves can leave many feeling like they don’t belong to any real community.
Washington architect Ross Chapin is one of those professional designers. He has spent more than a decade researching, designing and building small-scale housing developments that he believes strengthen and enhance communities. Chapin coined the term “pocket neighborhood” for the compact modern village that he sees stemming the tide of oversized homes and disjointed communities.
Now he’s written a book, “Pocket Neighborhoods,” that explains how these scaled- down developments can enrich and expand our sense of “home” and offer stronger community connections in our daily lives.
At the outset, Chapin notes a curious exception in the housing market. More than 60 percent of American households consist of just one or two persons, he says, but what do homebuilder and realtors promote? Big homes, with enough square footage to accommodate large families.
So, first, we scale down the structures.
But while size matters, it’s not the heart of the matter. Whether it’s via a circle of huts in a primitive village or the ordered layout of a traditional town square, humans tend naturally to congregate around a shared center space, or commons. Each household is a singular entity, sufficient for daily activities, while the shared space allows for group activities and fosters relationships among those who live around it.
With examples ranging from clusters of summer cabins on Martha’s Vineyard to bungalow courtyards in California, Chapin cites historical precedents for such neighborhoods, though he acknowledges that current zoning codes often need revision to become friendlier to the pocket-neighborhood concept.
He also identifies the essential elements that enable these small housing clusters to become genuine communities:
• Connection to the larger neighborhood — Pocket neighborhoods are not gated communities or walled-off survivalist compounds. They typically have clearly defined boundaries and discreet entrances, but they are not cut off from surrounding streets.
• Cottage-scale homes — Home sizes are modest, often within the range of 600 to 1,200 square feet, and neighborhoods typically number between four and 12 households.
• Green space or “commons” in center — Most of the cottages will have some private yard area, but they will face one or more large open spaces that offer room for recreation, group activities, children’s play areas or a community garden.
• Multifunction commons building — Available to residents for entertaining, meetings and other activities, these buildings can also house fitness centers, workshop space or tool sheds for storing landscaping equipment.
• Vehicles stay at the perimeter — Garages, carports and driveways often occupy the outer areas of a pocket neighborhood, connected to homes and the commons via a web of walking paths. This makes for a quieter and safer commons.
• Open front porches — Each cottage features an open porch large enough to function as an outdoor room. This space serves as both a connection to neighbors and as one of several layers (along with a planting border, low fence and small front yard) that provide some visual and acoustic separation between the commons and the home’s interior.
• Individual home designs — While they will likely share some common features, the cottages should be differentiated by variations in exterior colors, architectural detailing and layouts. Open floor plans and large windows up front will help them seem more spacious, with private spaces concentrated toward the rear of the home.
Chapin details many other elements and features of the pocket neighborhood, each aimed at achieving a balance between private and public life. Like diamonds, genuine communities derive value from four C’s — civility, cooperation, consideration and compromise. This book offers no guarantee that such virtues will automatically surface to create idyllic towns and cities, only the premise that thoughtfully designed and properly scaled neighborhoods will inspire their frequent expression.
