The Missing Middle

I went to a conference recently and participated in a tour and session on ‘Missing Middle Housing.’ Missing Middle housing is a term coined by Dan Parolek of Opticos Design, Inc. Missing Middle refers to housing types between a single-family home and multi-family apartments that are compatible in scale to

read more

Density and Affordable Housing

Housing costs can be directly related to the very basic economic theory of supply and demand. As demand increases and supply remains the same, the costs necessarily go up. This is very much evident in Sebastopol today. Sebastopol is seen as a desirable community to live in. It’s small, has

read more

Building Dense Does Not Have To Be Dense

This is an interesting blog post that discusses good and bad density. Many people, particularly in small towns like where I live, are very resistant when you mention density. But when advocating density in a town like Sebastopol, I’m not talking about skyscrapers or even multi-family type buildings. Single-family neighborhoods

read more

Property tax impacts of sprawl

There is a growing body of evidence that shows how sprawl is bankrupting communities that cannot keep up with the maintenance of all the infrastructure required to serve the sprawl. New infrastructure (streets, water, sewer, electric, gas) is often conditioned on the developer to install, but they have no obligation

read more

The D-word

The word density tends to elicit a strong, generally negative, response from many people. The mere mention of the word brings out opponents to a proposed development project, en masse.  Particularly in a small town like Sebastopol, density seems to conjure images of overcrowded tenement-like living conditions, faceless apartment tower blocks,

read more

FRITZ ARCHITECTURE-URBANISM
small town urbanism

urban design thoughts through the filter of living in a small town

P.O. Box 1074
Sebastopol, CA 95473
707.975.6220
paul@fritzarchitecture.com
Paul Fritz in Sebastopol, CA on Houzz

GET IN TOUCH

[contact-form-7 id="35" title="Contact form 1"]