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Written by Christopher Hawthorne

The architectural type most directly associated with Los Angeles in the public imagination -- the single-family house, surrounded by extensive private gardens -- has not over the years proved to be a particularly effective mechanism for promoting community or advancing the notion that a city is made up of spaces that we all share. L.A. has not only been a private city but also a Balkanized one, made up in large part of enclaves connected by boulevards and freeways.

But that critique of Los Angeles overlooks two things. One is that before World War I the city was actually quite adept at building housing that was affordable and that promoted the idea of collective space and collective values, particularly in the handsome group of courtyard apartment house and bungalow courts built in the first decades of the 20th century by architects including Irving Gill, Richard Neutra and others. In addition, a growing population in L.A. County, which will have to absorb another 1.5 million residents by 2020, means that density is coming whether we like it or not.

The question, then, becomes: How can new housing development in Los Angles use smart architecture and green features to help make that density -- and apartment living -- something residents welcome rather than fear? One positive development along those lines has been the city of Los Angeles' new small-lot subdivision ordinance, passed three years ago by the City Council and just now beginning to have an impact on the built environment here. The ordinance makes it easier for developers to build a group of small single-family homes on a lot that before could have helped only a single home. There are legitimate questions, as the subprime meltdown continues, about the extent to which cities ought to promote home-ownership to low- and middle-income families, especially in a place where housing costs are as high as they are here. But in terms of promoting community, the best-designed and most affordable of the new small-lot projects, by the architect John Kaliski and others, are undoubtedly a step in the right direction.