What is Good Design?

	Introduction
	Meets the user's needs
	Understands and Responds to Its Context
	Enhances its Neighborhood
	Built to Last

Understands and Responds to Its Context

Although the "context" in which an affordable housing development is brought to life includes socioeconomic, legal and regulatory issues, the Design Advisor focuses on the physical context in which the project will be located. This context is made up of the key physical elements - streets, sidewalks, homes, yards, parks, playgrounds, etc. - that are present in the neighborhood surrounding the site of an affordable housing development.

How wide are the sidewalks? Are they completely paved or is there a grassy strip? What do the roofs of neighboring houses look like? Are they pitched or flat, gabled or hipped? What are the primary exterior materials? What are the main colors? Do most of the surrounding houses have porches? Patios? Decks? How is open space handled? Questions such as these can help define the physical context in which a new development will be located. (See the Design Considerations Checklist for additional guidance.)

Based on the answers, two basic courses of action are possible. A developer can choose to incorporate many of the features of the surrounding neighborhood into his/her design, to help the project fit in and reinforce the existing fabric. Or, the developer can consciously choose not to replicate what's around his/her project and do something different.

Either course of action is acceptable if the context has been systematically analyzed. The only unacceptable action is to proceed directly to the design stage without any context analysis at all. (See 20 Steps to Design Quality, especially Step 5, for further information.)

This Detroit building looks just like the large, older, single family homes that are its neighbors. In fact it is a new, infill, townhouse unit that contains individual homes for four low and very low income families. (Field Street) This Albany, New York townhouse project responds directly to the row house context in the historic district where it was built. (Catherine Street) These Charleston, South Carolina homes very consciously use the 18th century "single house," popular throughout the city's historic district, as a model. (Charleston Infill Housing) The development team for this Stamford, Connecticut project analyzed the surrounding context - mostly high rise apartment complexes - and decided that the best response would be to do something different. They looked at high quality, middle class housing in other Stamford neighborhoods for models and created this highly successful low rise, townhouse-with-flats development in response. (Parkside Gables) The development team for this Oakland, CA project chose as their "context" not the deteriorated conditions that currently surrounded their site, but conditions that existed there forty years before, when low rise housing-over-shops contributed vitality to the street and economic opportunity to the community. They created a successful project and hope it will serve as a model for future developments in this strategic downtown neighborhood. (Hismen Hin-nu Terrace)