The town home explosion

Take a quick drive around Ballard and you’ll see plenty of town homes for sale or under construction. These are going up on Market just east of 8th…

Same goes for most of Seattle’s neighborhoods. As of April 18, Windermere said there were 552 town homes for sale in Seattle, compared with 1,923 single-family houses, reports the Seattle Times. And in most cases, they look like they were designed from the same cookie cutter. So why don’t the designs better match the neighborhoods? One possible reason is “micropermitting,” which the Times describes as a “legal loophole” to avoid public review. If you’re just as confused as we are with neighborhood planning and how these decisions get made, Peggy Sturdivant is writing a series for Crosscut that delves into the politics and the mechanics. Fascinating stuff.

Adds Ballardeer in comments below: “I walked by some new town homes near Greenlake the other day that actually look like an architect was involved (photo here)… Proof that you can do high-density housing without the depressing lack of architecture. Sadly, a lot of what’s going up in Ballard these days looks pretty drab.”