This insightful and inspirational book explores the concept of pocket neighborhoods—intimate, thoughtfully designed communities where neighbors know one another, fostering connection and support.
With Pocket Neighborhoods, Ross Chapin presents a compelling solution to the challenges of modern urban sprawl, sure to help spark readers' plans to build and find community. Ideal for empty nesters, single households, and families alike, these neighborhoods offer the warmth of a close-knit community just beyond your front door.
Join the movement toward creating meaningful, livable communities that prioritize connection and quality of life. With Pocket Neighborhoods, you'll find inspiration and practical ideas to foster a sense of belonging in an increasingly disconnected world.
Key Features:
- Inspirational Stories: Discover real-life accounts from residents and the visionary architects, planners, and developers who brought these neighborhoods to life.
- Historical Context: Chapin outlines the evolution of community living and the American Dream, shedding light on the shift from smaller, connected spaces to oversized houses.
- Diverse Neighborhood Models: Explore a variety of contemporary pocket neighborhoods, including New Urban communities, eco-neighborhoods, affordable housing, and houseboat communities.
- Cohousing Insights: Learn about the history and benefits of cohousing communities, from their Danish origins to successful examples across the globe, including senior cohousing.
- Retrofitting Solutions: The book offers strategies for integrating pocket neighborhoods into existing communities, making it a valuable resource for urban planners and residents alike.
A 2012 Nautilus Silver Award Winner
Pocket Neighborhoods: Creating Small Scale Community in a Large Scale World introduces an antidote to faceless, placeless sprawl — small scale neighborhoods where people can easily know one another, where empty nesters and single householders with far-flung families can find friendship or a helping hand nearby, and where children can have shirt-tail aunties and uncles just beyond their front gate.
The book describes inspiring pocket neighborhoods through stories of the people who live there, as well as the progressive planners, innovative architects, pioneering developers, craftspeople and gardeners who helped create them.
Sarah Susanka, author of the best selling Not So Big House series, wrote the Foreword to the book, placing pocket neighborhoods within context of the contemporary trends in housing and community. Ross Chapin begins the book by outlining the shifts in the scale of community and the American Dream over several generations, leading to super-sized houses in a sea of development, then describes a solution to help restore healthy, livable communities. The first section of the book looks at historic precedents of pocket neighborhoods. The second section covers a wide range of contemporary pocket neighborhoods, including New Urban communities, affordable housing, houseboat communities, eco-neighborhoods, and Ross Chapin Architects' own pocket neighborhood examples. The third section focuses on 'cohousing' communities, from Danish origins in the 1960s, to examples across America, Australia and New Zealand, including a chapter on senior cohousing. The fourth section looks at retrofitting pocket neighborhoods within existing communities.
Throughout the book are series of "Design Keys" that highlight the essential principles of pocket neighborhood planning and design, and short stories about "Pocket Neighborhood Pioneers" who blazed new trails. The book is filled with rich photographs, drawings, illustrations and site plans, and a Resources section at the end provides leads for the reader to explore the topic in further detail.
Ross Chapin, AIA, is the principal of Ross Chapin Architects, located on Whidbey Island, north of Seattle. He has focused on "sensibly sized" custom residences, "pocket neighborhood" developments, and mixed-use projects since 1982. His partnerships with developers, city planners, and builders have created innovative housing and neighborhood prototypes that have received significant national attention and are shifting the way we think about our homes and communities. His projects have won numerous design awards, including the 2005, 2007, and 2009 AIA Housing awards, and have been published in "Architectural Record," " Builder magazine," " The New York Times," " Boston Globe," " Fine Homebuilding," "Metropolitan Home," " This Old House," " Sunset," ""and more than 25 books, including "Creating the Not So Big House," " Home By Design," " Patterns of Home," " The Good Green Home," " The New Cottage Home," ""and" Blueprint Small. "Ross lectures on housing at conferences and universities throughout the country. Visit his website at www.rosschapin.com.
