Tract housing is a type of housing development in which multiple similar houses are built on a tract (area) of land that is subdivided into smaller lots. Tract housing developments are found in suburb developments that were modeled on the "Levittown" concept and sometimes encompass large areas of dozens of square miles. [1] [2]
Tract housing came about in the 1940s when the demand for cheap housing skyrocketed. Economies of scale meant that large numbers of identical houses could be built faster and more cheaply to fulfill the growing demand. Developers would purchase a dozen or more adjacent lots and conduct the building construction as an assembly-line process. [3]
Tract housing development makes use of few architectural designs, and labor costs are reduced because workers need to learn the skills and movements of constructing only those designs rather than repeat the learning curve. In addition, as all houses in the development will be built at the same time, the cost of purchasing and transporting building supplies may be reduced due to economies of scale. Components such as roof trusses, plumbing, and stair systems are often prefabricated in factories and installed on-site. This allows builders to offer lower prices, which in turn can make houses affordable to a larger percentage of the population. Early tract houses were often identical, but many tracts since the late 20th century have several designs and other variations in footprint, roof form, and materials, along with options such as garage bays, for a more diverse appearance. [3]
The concept of tract housing is occasionally mocked in North American popular culture as the basis of suburbia; notable examples are the songs "Little Boxes" by Malvina Reynolds, "Suburbia" by the Pet Shop Boys and "Subdivisions" by Rush. It is also often criticized by city planners and architects, as its construction tends to overlook required elements of successful community building, instead creating a homogeneous residential neighborhood with no walkability, local employment, commerce, services, or attractions within close commuting distance. This leads to a heavy reliance on automobile travel, as residents are unable to address any of these needs locally. [4]
A suburb is an area within a metropolitan area which has a higher or lower population density and sometimes less detached housing. In many metropolitan areas suburbs rise in population during the day and are where most jobs are located; being major commercial and job hubs, many suburbs also exist as separate residential communities within commuting distance of a larger city. Suburbs can have their own political or legal jurisdiction, especially in the United States, but this is not always the case, especially in the United Kingdom, where most suburbs are located within the administrative boundaries of cities. In most English-speaking countries, suburban areas are defined in contrast to central city or inner city areas, but in Australian English and South African English, suburb has become largely synonymous with what is called a "neighborhood" in the U.S., but it is used in contrast with inner city areas.
A housing estate is a group of homes and other buildings built together as a single development. The exact form may vary from country to country.
A terrace, terraced house (UK), or townhouse (US) is a kind of medium-density housing that first started in 16th century Europe with a row of joined houses sharing side walls. In the United States and Canada these are sometimes known as row houses or row homes.
A residential area is a land used in which housing predominates, as opposed to industrial and commercial areas.
McMansion is a pejorative term for a large, "mass-produced" house in a suburban community that is marketed to the upper middle class in the United States.
Urban sprawl is defined as "the spreading of urban developments on undeveloped land near a more or less densely populated city". Urban sprawl has been described as the unrestricted growth in many urban areas of housing, commercial development, and roads over large expanses of land, with little concern for very dense urban planning. Sometimes the urban areas described as the most "sprawling" are the most densely populated. In addition to describing a special form of urbanization, the term also relates to the social and environmental consequences associated with this development. In modern times some suburban areas described as "sprawl" have less detached housing and higher density than the nearby core city. Medieval suburbs suffered from the loss of protection of city walls, before the advent of industrial warfare. Modern disadvantages and costs include increased travel time, transport costs, pollution, and destruction of the countryside. The revenue for building and maintaining urban infrastructure in these areas are gained mostly through property and sales taxes. As most jobs in the US are now located in suburbs generating much of the revenue, although a lack of growth will require higher tax rates.
Suburbanization (AE), or suburbanisation (BE), is a population shift from historic core cities or rural areas into suburbs, resulting in the formation of (sub)urban sprawl. As a consequence of the movement of households and businesses away from city centers, low-density, peripheral urban areas grow.
Subdivisions are the act of dividing land into pieces that are easier to sell or otherwise develop, usually via a plat. The former single piece as a whole is then known as a subdivision. Subdivisions may be simple, involving only a single seller and buyer, or complex, involving large tracts of land divided into many smaller parcels. If it is used for housing it is typically known as a housing subdivision or housing development, although some developers tend to call these areas communities.
A single-family detached home, also called a single-detached dwelling,single-family residence (SFR) or separate house is a free-standing residential building. It is defined in opposition to a multi-family residential dwelling.
Ranch is a domestic architectural style that originated in the United States. The ranch-style house is noted for its long, close-to-the-ground profile, and wide open layout. The style fused modernist ideas and styles with notions of the American Western period of wide open spaces to create a very informal and casual living style. While the original ranch style was informal and basic in design, ranch-style houses built in the United States from around the early 1960s increasingly had more dramatic features such as varying roof lines, cathedral ceilings, sunken living rooms, and extensive landscaping and grounds.
California bungalow is an alternative name for the American Craftsman style of residential architecture, when it was applied to small-to-medium-sized homes rather than the large "ultimate bungalow" houses of designers like Greene and Greene. California bungalows became popular in suburban neighborhoods across the United States, and to varying extents elsewhere, from around 1910 to 1939.
Prospect New Town is a New Urbanist housing development located on the southern edge of the city of Longmont in Boulder County, Colorado, in the United States. The first full-scale new urbanist new development in Colorado, it was developed starting in the mid-1990s by Kiki Wallace and designed by the firm of Duany Plater Zyberk & Company, who also designed the new urbanist communities of Seaside, Florida, and Kentlands in Gaithersburg, Maryland. As of 2009, the project is in its sixth phase of development. It is intended to have a population of approximately 2,000 people in 585 units on 340 lots.
Joseph Leopold Eichler was a 20th-century post-war American real estate developer known for developing distinctive residential subdivisions of Mid-century modern style tract housing in California. He was one of the influential advocates of bringing modern architecture from custom residences and large corporate buildings to general public availability. His company and developments remain in the Greater San Francisco Bay Area and Greater Los Angeles.
Roland Park is a community located in Baltimore, Maryland. It was developed between 1890 and 1920 as an upper-class streetcar suburb. The early phases of the neighborhood were designed by Edward Bouton and Frederick Law Olmsted Jr.
In urban planning, infill, or in-fill, is the rededication of land in an urban environment, usually open-space, to new construction. Infill also applies, within an urban polity, to construction on any undeveloped land that is not on the urban margin. The slightly broader term "land recycling" is sometimes used instead. Infill has been promoted as an economical use of existing infrastructure and a remedy for urban sprawl. Its detractors view it as overloading urban services, including increased traffic congestion and pollution, and decreasing urban green-space. Many also detract it for social and historical reasons, partly due to its unproven effects and its similarity with gentrification.
The bay-and-gable is a distinct residential architectural style that is ubiquitous in the older portions of Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The most prominent feature of the style is a large bay window that usually covers more than half the front façade of the home, surmounted by a gable roof. The bay window typically extends from the ground level towards the roof, although a variant of the housing form exists where the bay window fronts only the first level; known as a half-bay-and-gable. The housing form may be built as a stand-alone structure, although it is more often built as a semi-detached, or as terraced houses.
The houses at 157–165 East 78th Street are a row of five attached brick houses on that street in Manhattan, New York, United States. They are the remainder of an original group of 11 built in 1861, when the area was originally being developed due to the extension of rail transit into it.
Missing middle housing refers to a lack of medium-density housing in the North American context. It is often characterized by a range of multi-family or clustered housing types that are compatible in scale with single-family or transitional neighborhoods. It is usually used to describe a phenomenon in Canada and the United States, and those countries which have sought to replicate their style of urban planning, which lacks this type of medium-density housing due to car dependant suburban sprawl and zoning regulations.
Blackland is a historically black neighborhood on the east side of Austin, Texas, located north of Martin Luther King, Jr. Blvd, south of Manor Road, east of I-35, and west of Chestnut Street. The neighborhood was originally known as Blacklands and was settled by Swedish immigrants, but evolved into a predominantly African-American neighborhood following the 1928 Austin city plan, which called for the relocation of non-white residents to the east side of the city. Up until the 1980s, the neighborhood was targeted for demolition to make way for an expansion of the University of Texas campus. In 1983, the Blackland Community Development Corporation was formed to build, purchase and maintain housing for low-income families and special populations.
In Australia, the dual occupancy concept was proposed by the Melbourne and Metropolitan Board of Works in 1981 to enable existing houses and housing lots to be subdivided into two to make more efficient use of existing facilities and urban infrastructure, to provide support links between the two households and to minimise external maintenance and gardening burdens. Nowadays, accessory dwelling units are increasingly being legitimized by state and local governments. These units can be a division of, addition to, or separate from the principal dwelling and are usually subject to minimum allotment sizes, site coverage, access and setback requirements. While dual properties are a fairly new concept in Australia, they have long been a common style of dwelling in countries such as Sweden, Japan and the United States.
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