{"id":148,"date":"2025-05-08T17:29:03","date_gmt":"2025-05-08T17:29:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/innovationscdc.org\/blog\/?p=148"},"modified":"2025-05-08T17:29:03","modified_gmt":"2025-05-08T17:29:03","slug":"how-a-simple-design-change-could-transform-u-s-cities-for-families-bloomberg","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/innovationscdc.org\/blog\/2025\/05\/08\/how-a-simple-design-change-could-transform-u-s-cities-for-families-bloomberg\/","title":{"rendered":"How a simple design change could transform U.S. cities for families – Bloomberg"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The Answer To Making Cities\u00a0More Family-Friendly? Courtyards<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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Small courtyard apartment buildings line the Sunnyside neighborhood of New York.Photographer: Jeenah Moon\/Bloomberg<\/em><\/sub><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

New housing experiments with courtyards show that this age-old design approach can still deliver for cities struggling to provide homes for families.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By Alexandra Lange<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

October 31, 2024 at 7:30 AM CDT<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bloomberg News has won the 2025 Pulitzer Prize for Criticism, with a collection of essays for Bloomberg CityLab by contributor Alexandra Lange. <\/em>Read the series here.<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The population of children under five is shrinking across the US. That group has decreased most rapidly in big cities<\/a>: 14% in Los Angeles County, 18% percent in New York City and 15% percent in Cook County, Illinois, which includes Chicago.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is bad news for the diversity and stability of cities, which are improved by the amenities that families seek \u2014 parks, public libraries, safe streets. It\u2019s also discouraging for families who prefer to live in the city or don\u2019t have the option or desire to move to the car-dominated suburbs. Any effort to retain families has to start with housing, their primary expense.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That one weird trick for making cities more family-friendly? We\u2019ve known it for decades: It\u2019s the courtyard.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As advocate Alicia Pederson wrote in the Chicago Tribune<\/em><\/a> earlier this year, \u201cTo compete with the suburbs, American cities should try an urban typology that has kept families in European city centers for millennia.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sign up here for Design Edition<\/em><\/a>, CityLab’s newsletter on architecture and the people who make buildings happen.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

While Europe can claim centuries-old courts, America dabbled in them for decades, before the suburbs became the dominant housing type of both government subsidy and political propaganda.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Courtyards don\u2019t have to belong to the past. While textbook examples in brick and stone are lovely \u2014 and still home to thriving communities \u2014 contemporary architects are making courts in all sorts of materials, and for all types of housing, from apartments to townhomes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The studio French 2D designed Bay State Cohousing in suburban Boston around a shared central courtyard.Photographer: Naho Kubota<\/em><\/sup><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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A courtyard made for kids at Brunson Terrace, an affordable development in Santa Monica designed by Brooks + Scarpa.Courtesy of Brooks + Scarpa<\/em><\/sup><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

One of the first influential figures to advance the idea of the courtyard as the ideal urban type for families was Henry Darbishire<\/a>, the mid-19th century English architect. His first patron, Angela Burdett-Coutts<\/a>, was inspired by Charles Dickens and his novels of the urban poor to apply her wealth to reformist housing. \u201cNurturing the family and protecting children from the street was a huge part of the logic \u2014 turning the city inward,\u201d says Matthew G. Lasner, housing historian and the author of High Life: Condo Living in the Suburban Century<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Architects and philanthropists quickly embraced an easily replicable courtyard model, with a single entrance on the street and interior vertical access off a planted court. The concept came to America in the 1870s via developers like Alfred Treadway White, responsible for the Cobble Hill Towers<\/a> in Brooklyn. In the 1920s, more reformist developers \u2014 including everyone from the Rockefellers<\/a> to communist unions \u2014 constructed many more of these courtyard projects.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As architecture critic John Taylor Boyd wrote in 1920 of the Linden Court complex<\/a> in Jackson Heights, the courtyard\u2019s \u201cbenefits are apparent when it is remembered that the streets are the only playground of New York children, including the children of the rich; even the luxurious Park Avenue apartment houses make a poor showing in this respect.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

New policies, and a better understanding of how families thrive in urban environments, could make courtyards the housing of the future once again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Courtyards Across the Eras<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

When you\u2019re talking courtyards in America, it\u2019s hard to avoid Sunnyside Gardens. Not only does the Queens community remain one of New York City\u2019s best neighborhoods, but it was home to one of America\u2019s best critics, who made his affection clear.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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An interior courtyard at the Sunnyside Garden Apartments.Photographer: Jeenah Moon\/Bloomberg<\/em><\/sup><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Lewis Mumford was one of the first residents of Sunnyside Gardens, completed in 1928, and constantly returned to its balance of private and public space, building and garden, in his analysis of other lesser New York City housing options. In \u201cThe Plight of the Prosperous<\/a>,\u201d published in The New Yorker<\/em> in 1950, Mumford takes aim at the new white-brick residential buildings \u201cthat have sprung up since the war in the wealthy and fashionable parts of the city.\u201d While new low- and middle-income housing projects like his own \u201cprovide light and air and walks and sometimes even patches of grass and forsythia,\u201d these other private buildings, clustered in uptown rich neighborhoods, lack multiple exposures, outdoor space, cross-ventilation and quiet. He was leading a much richer domestic life in Queens.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Clarence Stein and Henry Wright<\/a>\u00a0were the primary architects and planners behind Sunnyside Gardens, with\u00a0Marjorie Sewell Cautley<\/a>\u00a0the landscape architect; all three would subsequently collaborate on\u00a0Radburn, New Jersey,<\/a>\u00a0the \u201ctown for the motor age\u201d that in fact applied these communal principles for a result that we would now call transit-oriented development.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The Phipps Garden Apartments comprise two large courtyard complexes in Sunnyside Gardens.Photographer: Jeenah Moon\/Bloomberg<\/em><\/sup><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Townhouses line a shared private garden in Sunnyside Gardens.Photographer: Jeenah Moon\/Bloomberg<\/em><\/sup><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The planners\u2019 primary insight, in both the city and the suburbs, was to prioritize protected, communal open space over private yards or interior amenities. The courts, or courtyards, could be much larger if not subdivided by owner, and even in areas with public parks, having play space (and play companions) directly outside your door was a huge amenity. That meant no scheduled playdates, no interrupted housework and only minimal supervision required, since kids didn\u2019t have to cross a street to find friends.<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
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The Horatio West Court apartments in Santa Monica, California, built in 1919 and designed by Irving Gill, reflect a modernist take on Mission Revival\u2013style homes, with low-income units built around a shared court.Photographer: Mark Boster\/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images<\/em><\/sup><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

On the West Coast, the courtyard evolved a little differently: surrounded by lower density, semi-detached houses with, eventually, a swimming pool in the center instead of a lawn. Irving Gill, considered the father of California modernism, designed prototype bungalow court<\/a> in Santa Monica in the teens, with parking out of sight in the back and doorstep gardens. On tighter sites, U-shaped buildings with Spanish- and Italian-influenced architecture featured tiled fountains at center court.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the postwar era, multi-family housing, like its single-family contemporaries, embraced the pool. Fans of the 1990s-era soap Melrose Place<\/em> will be familiar with this type as a haven for swinging singles<\/a>, but one prominent real-world example \u2014 Parkview Village West<\/a>, built in Torrance, California, in 1964 \u2014 \u201cwas initially marketed to families with children,\u201d Lasner says. \u201cIt had the pool, a rec room, a supervised children\u2019s center, a teen center. But it failed. Families in 1964 in Los Angeles were not interested in this more communal life.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 2024, the marketplace looks a little different. A recent op-ed in the\u00a0Los Angeles Daily News<\/em>\u00a0bemoaning the city\u2019s loss of families<\/a>\u00a0mentions many of these low-rise, good-weather alternatives: \u201cthe city\u2019s beloved Spanish-style fourplexes, bungalow courts, and stylish apartment buildings like Hancock Park\u2019s El Royale are a product of a time when LA homebuilding was relatively unrestricted.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Designed by Heth Wharton and Ralph Vaughn in 1949, the Chase Knolls garden apartment complex in Los Angeles was rehabilitated in 2021.Photographer: Adrian Scott Fine\/Los Angeles Conservancy<\/em><\/sup><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Over subsequent decades, the appeal of the courtyard plan never faded: Pushing the building mass to the edge of the lot, providing a balcony, deck or minimal yard for every resident, and creating a landscaped court in the center of the building appear in designs from the 1970s through the 2000s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Theorist Christopher Alexander even gave a name to this phenomenon in his classic 1977 study<\/a> of building patterns, A Pattern Language<\/em>. Building pattern number 68, \u201cConnected Play,\u201d spells it out. \u201cSince the layout of the land between the houses in a neighborhood virtually controls the formation of play groups, it therefore has a critical effect on people\u2019s mental health. A typical suburban subdivision with private lots opening off streets almost confines children to their houses,\u201d he writes. \u201cChildren need other children.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Despite the fact that these courts are still in demand, most are now functionally illegal to build, thanks to restrictive zoning laws and building codes. \u201cFootnote is, I stopped by [Parkview Village] a few years ago, and there was a giant bouncy castle and a pool full of screaming kids,\u201d says Lasner.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Courtyards to the Future<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

For a number of burning contemporary housing debates, courtyards are an answer hiding in plain sight.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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One of several small courtyards at 450 Warren, a new condo building designed by SO-IL for Brooklyn\u2019s Boerum Hill.Photographer: Iwan Baan<\/em><\/sup><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Chain link mesh around a vertical interior court at 450 Warren allows light and air to filter through.Photographer: Iwan Baan<\/em><\/sup><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In 1993, as part of Vienna\u2019s effort toward \u201cgender mainstreaming<\/a>\u201d public policy, the city held a competition for an apartment complex designed by and for women. The result, Women-Work-City was, unsurprisingly, 357 units of courtyard housing<\/a>. As The Guardian<\/em> wrote in 2019, \u201cIt was characterized by a woman\u2019s perspective at every level: from pram storage on every floor and wide stairwells to encourage neighbourly interactions; to flexible flat layouts and high-quality secondary rooms; to the height of the building, low enough to ensure \u2018eyes upon the street<\/a>.\u2019\u201d The complex also included an on-site kindergarten, doctor\u2019s office and pharmacy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Courtyard housing also offers a powerful salve for the housing affordability crisis. Most courtyard housing is also \u201cmissing middle housing\u201d \u2014 defined as multifamily projects ranging from accessory dwelling units<\/a> and duplexes to mid-rise apartment buildings \u2014 most of which could easily be arranged around common green space. As the Regional Plan Association reported this June<\/a>, most missing middle building types \u201care already part of New York City\u2019s current housing stock, but regulations broadly prohibit new ones from getting built.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Exterior walkways at Bay State Cohousing free the building from requirements that restrict the arrangement of apartment corridors.Photographer: Naho Kubota<\/em><\/sup><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Courtyard housing formally aligns with a\u00a0burgeoning YIMBY movement<\/a>\u00a0to legalize\u00a0point-access blocks<\/a>. Most apartment buildings in the US are required by law to use double-loaded corridors: hotel-style hallways with units on each side and stairways at both ends. The dual-stairwell building code requirement limits the size and shape of apartment units. Advocates in multiple states are pushing to allow buildings of up to five stories to have a single stair-and-elevator combo, which would enable a better mix of units sized for families, and more daylight and better cross-ventilation between them. Single-stair access can also provide a sense of community: Residential colleges, another longstanding form of courtyard housing, frequently organize activities by \u201chall\u201d or \u201centryway,\u201d governed by the doors opening off a single-stair hall.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even without legislative change, creative designers and developers across the country are turning to the court to disrupt traditional housing patterns. Brooklyn architects SO-IL have made casual encounters, shared outdoor space and even pastels the hallmarks of several residential projects<\/a> with developer Tankhouse. Their collaboration started with 450 Warren<\/a>, a condominium in Brooklyn\u2019s Boerum Hill with an open-air court framed by wire mesh. A project in Fort Green, 144 Vanderbilt \u2014 the pink building<\/a> \u2014 includes more of the same, layering small private outdoor spaces, exterior circulation and larger common gardens. The innovation over the past is the multiple levels across which run-ins with neighbors and greenery can take place.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt was clear from the beginning that families were at the center\u201d of building community, Tankhouse\u2019s Sebastian Mendez told me<\/a>. \u201cA building can have communal spaces where kids can play without one having to worry about where they are.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The 48-unit Brunson Terrace complex recalls the history of courtyard developments in Southern California.Courtesy of Brooks + Scarpa<\/em><\/sub><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

For Brunson Terrace, a 48-unit, 100% affordable project which opened in Santa Monica in 2024, Los Angeles architects Brooks + Scarpa left its modest ground-level courtyard to the kids, with bright climbing structures surrounded by organic planting beds. Exterior bridges, stairs and walkways provide access to quieter seating areas. They also make circulation more fun and functional: laundry rooms are located adjacent to the stairs, so caregivers can do chores with an ear out for their kids playing below.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Providing services, not just housing, is key to the Tapestry Block<\/a>, an affordable housing project for Denver being developed by the nonprofit Colorado Health Foundation. The Denver-based architecture firm Livable Cities Studio outlined a vision for the project that includes a medical clinic, child care and spaces for after school and cultural programming, all built around a half-acre courtyard.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhen people have families with children, the home is important, but equally important are the people who are there with you,\u201d says Livable Cities president Meredith Wenskoski. \u201cYour neighborhood is crucial \u2013 that resource-sharing, places for gathering and events.\u201d She says it\u2019s important to think long-term: The Tapestry Block courtyard has a small playground, but they also want to provide teen hangout space. \u201cYou want families to grow and stay.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bay State Cohousing<\/a>, a 30-unit development outside Boston, has common amenities as part of its charter, including a shared kitchen and activity rooms. But the pastel, clapboard complex, intended to blend in with single-family neighbors, also forms a U around a southwest-facing courtyard, with outdoor circulation providing plenty of opportunities for casual run-ins with the neighbors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe courtyard is a nested boundary that allows interaction with other children, and more importantly, with other adults who become a kind of network,\u201d says Jenny French, whose firm French 2D<\/a> designed Bay State. \u201cIn an urban setting, the barrier that the contemporary parent has to letting their child out the door, thinking about the car-dominated city where they are unable to play in the street \u2013 the courtyard is a natural alternative.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

French, who has also been coordinating the housing studio at the Harvard Graduate School of Design for seven years, can\u2019t help but extend these design observations into the cultural and political spheres. Everyone talks about loneliness in America for people of all ages. For teens and seniors alike, French sees a solution. It\u2019s one we\u2019ve had all along: \u201cCould a courtyard house actually be the friendship apparatus we need?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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