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  #61  
Old Posted Nov 16, 2022, 10:31 PM
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Doady Doady is offline
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Street of single-family houses in inner Chicago:
https://goo.gl/maps/HoTZML7teydbTpbp9

Street of apartment buildings in inner Toronto:
https://goo.gl/maps/dvjCjXANx9j5rbf79

Street of single-family houses in suburban Toronto:
https://goo.gl/maps/tib17uF8e5pRh1aU7

Street of single-family houses in suburban Atlanta:
https://goo.gl/maps/EvtLsQzD7nq1YKfR7

I think to make the issue of higher density vs. lower density too much an issue of multi-family housing vs. single-family houses is a big mistake. A lot of US and Canada haven't even taken the first steps, but somehow we expect them to make the big leap. One step at a time seems better.

I go to Montreal and I always love all the side streets lined with those winding staircases for those low-rise apartments. But I'm not sure even Toronto is at that point yet, let alone the rest of Canada and US. The full potential of even the single-family house is still largely untapped here, let alone the potential of semi-detached houses, townhouses/rowhouses, stacked townhouses, low-rise apartments, etc.
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  #62  
Old Posted Nov 16, 2022, 11:23 PM
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Originally Posted by Chef View Post
One of the exciting things that is happening in Minneapolis now is that local developers seem to have found a formula for building new missing middle housing so we are starting to see it crop up in increasing numbers on lots that were single family houses. Most of it looks like this - not beautiful but it works:

https://www.google.com/maps/@44.9621...7i16384!8i8192
Looks good to me. How big is a standard lot in Minneapolis? Seems like 40' wide maybe? It's 25ft in Chicago. So comparable buildings will often use 2 lots or 50 ft. Just interesting to see how lot size makes such a difference in the look of a city.
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  #63  
Old Posted Nov 16, 2022, 11:30 PM
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Originally Posted by Klippenstein View Post
It's 25ft in Chicago. So comparable buildings will often use 2 lots or 50 ft.
Just a clarification: the vast majority of Chicago 2 & 3-flats sit upon single standard city lots, typically anywhere from 25' - 30' wide. Our 3-flat is on a 27' wide lot.

6-flats (two 3-flats smooshed together around a common stairwell) often sit upon double lots (50+ feet wide).
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  #64  
Old Posted Nov 16, 2022, 11:36 PM
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Originally Posted by Steely Dan View Post
Just a clarification: the vast majority of Chicago 2 & 3-flats sit upon single standard city lots, typically anywhere from 25' - 30' wide. Our 3-flat is on a 27' wide lot.

6-flats (two 3-flats smooshed together around a common stairwell) often sit upon double lots (50+ feet wide).
I see. My little house is on a 25' wide lot. I guess it's not as standard as I thought.
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  #65  
Old Posted Nov 16, 2022, 11:42 PM
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I see. My little house is on a 25' wide lot. I guess it's not as standard as I thought.
No, you're correct, 25' x 125' is THE standard Chicago lot size, but sometimes they're a couple of feet wider.

And sometimes in the oldest parts of the city they're a couple of feet smaller.

But ~25' wide is the city standard.
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  #66  
Old Posted Nov 16, 2022, 11:59 PM
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Must be nice to have a basement. A place where you can go to have discreet conversations, as long as your lamp doesn't get bugged or something.
You can also have a conversation with the spiders and crickets down there. Especially the crickets. Tell them to STFU, that you have to go to work in the morning and tell the cricket to get a job and stop cricketing. At least the spider is involved in the construction industry. Building things. Cricket just sits out there cricketing all night, in hopes of mating with a female cricket, not producing anything for the basement economy. Basement politics, can get rough. Support your spiders. They keep basements free of pests and vermin. Spiders are the backbone of a solid basement. They just want to be left alone, and produce for their spider babies while keeping a basement clean by murdering hundreds of bugs.
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  #67  
Old Posted Nov 17, 2022, 12:54 AM
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Originally Posted by Klippenstein View Post
Looks good to me. How big is a standard lot in Minneapolis? Seems like 40' wide maybe? It's 25ft in Chicago. So comparable buildings will often use 2 lots or 50 ft. Just interesting to see how lot size makes such a difference in the look of a city.
It varies by neighborhood but 40 feet wide is typical. Part of it is that most of Minneapolis was platted a few decades later than Chicago. Minneapolis in 1900 was an extremely dense city with a very small footprint, it had 200k people in an area that is today's downtown. Most of that was torn down to build the modern downtown. So the inner residential neighborhoods of the city now are the suburbs of the early 20th century, and were never built as densely as old urban neighborhoods. They were platted as places for the middle class to live.
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  #68  
Old Posted Nov 17, 2022, 1:57 AM
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Yeah, 40'x125' (5,000 sqft) is the basic standard lot size in Minneapolis. A little larger isn't uncommon- 42' in also a common width, and depth up to 130' is normal where streets are platted a bit more narrow. Some older neighborhoods are platted narrower than 40', and 50' is common in some of the outer neighborhoods that developed latest. Older double-loaded corridor buildings are usually on lots that were rearranged to be 50'-80' wide.
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  #69  
Old Posted Nov 17, 2022, 3:15 PM
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Originally Posted by Chef View Post
It varies by neighborhood but 40 feet wide is typical. Part of it is that most of Minneapolis was platted a few decades later than Chicago. Minneapolis in 1900 was an extremely dense city with a very small footprint, it had 200k people in an area that is today's downtown. Most of that was torn down to build the modern downtown. So the inner residential neighborhoods of the city now are the suburbs of the early 20th century, and were never built as densely as old urban neighborhoods. They were platted as places for the middle class to live.
it's intersting how these things can sometimes get sorta "baked-in" from the beginning.

chicago stuck with its ~25' wide lots all the way up until about 1920, when the mass brick bungalow belt process started in earnest (we had bungalows before then, of course, but the 20's is when SFH-itis really took hold of the city's populace and literally hundreds of thousands of them were seemingly all built at once). as you move into inner bungalow belt areas, lot sizes tend to increase to around 30' wide, and then in the outter bungalow belt, 35' wide starts to become more common.
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  #70  
Old Posted Nov 17, 2022, 3:38 PM
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Originally Posted by Klippenstein View Post
I see. My little house is on a 25' wide lot. I guess it's not as standard as I thought.
EDIT: Someone already beat me to it.
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  #71  
Old Posted Nov 17, 2022, 3:45 PM
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Originally Posted by Steely Dan View Post
it's intersting how these things can sometimes get sorta "baked-in" from the beginning.

chicago stuck with its ~25' wide lots all the way up until about 1920, when the mass brick bungalow belt process started in earnest (we had bungalows before then, of course, but the 20's is when SFH-itis really took hold of the city's populace and literally hundreds of thousands of them were seemingly all built at once). as you move into inner bungalow belt areas, lot sizes tend to increase to around 30' wide, and then in the outter bungalow belt, 35' wide starts to become more common.
Not sure about the outter bungalow belt, but in typical northside neighborhoods, the standard is 25 x 125 as you stated, then 30 x 125 would be next standard, then 37.5 x 125 which makes sense, as that is 1.5 lots wide. Lot sizes then get messed up when they are near diagonal streets such as Clark or Lincoln, those streets will create lots that are as short as 85ft and as long as 150 ft depending on the block and how far from a major cross street. Intersections with a "T" often have longer lots as well as the width of the street has been added to the lots. It's pretty interesting once you get an idea of the street layout of a neighborhood, you can typically guess the lot sizes and where the larger/smaller lots will be located.
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  #72  
Old Posted Nov 17, 2022, 4:48 PM
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Not sure about the outter bungalow belt, but in typical northside neighborhoods, the standard is 25 x 125 as you stated, then 30 x 125 would be next standard, then 37.5 x 125 which makes sense, as that is 1.5 lots wide.
yeah, maybe the "standard" goes up to 37.5' in the outter bungalow belt. i was just ballparking by pulling distances off of google maps (far from an exact measure) in places like edison park, berwyn, clearing, and mt. greenwood.

Anyway, I took my kids over to a neighborhood playground the other day and loved how the low angle november setting sun was illuminating this row of classic Chicago "missing middle" housing.

WARNING: there are small yards in front of the building pictured below, so some of our more sensitive viewers might be offended and "hate it".



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"Missing middle" housing can be a great middle ground for many middle class families.

Last edited by Steely Dan; Nov 17, 2022 at 6:47 PM.
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  #73  
Old Posted Nov 17, 2022, 7:32 PM
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Originally Posted by Chef View Post
One of the exciting things that is happening in Minneapolis now is that local developers seem to have found a formula for building new missing middle housing so we are starting to see it crop up in increasing numbers on lots that were single family houses. Most of it looks like this - not beautiful but it works:

https://www.google.com/maps/@44.9621...7i16384!8i8192
the long triple-run ramp out front is kinda wonky (maybe minneapolis doesn't have ADA exceptions for small-scale multi-family?), but it gets the density job done.

we generally see a different architectural language here in chicago because of our masonry-oriented building codes, but examples like the blow are very common up in my neck of the woods.

before: https://www.google.com/maps/@41.9698...7i13312!8i6656

after: https://www.google.com/maps/@41.9698...7i16384!8i8192
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  #74  
Old Posted Nov 17, 2022, 7:35 PM
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I like the after much more.
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  #75  
Old Posted Nov 17, 2022, 8:13 PM
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Originally Posted by Steely Dan View Post
it's intersting how these things can sometimes get sorta "baked-in" from the beginning.

chicago stuck with its ~25' wide lots all the way up until about 1920

Those lots might have been platted decades earlier.

In England, attached SFH's often sit on very small lots (20x50 or even smaller). Just 20-25 feet separate the rear of one house from another. Such a situation pretty much never happened in the United States. This allows a high density to be achieved in a SFH area.

Here is an example in Liverpool:
https://www.google.com/maps/place/Li...16zL20vMDRsaDY

A real rear courtyard adds profoundly to living in a small house. You have space to make a mess when working on projects.
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  #76  
Old Posted Nov 17, 2022, 8:35 PM
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Those lots might have been platted decades earlier.
right, hence my comment about lot sizes often getting "baked-in" from the very beginning.




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Such a situation pretty much never happened in the United States.
south philly packs in its rowhouses at a similar scale:

https://www.google.com/maps/@39.9257.../data=!3m1!1e3

and with narrower streets than the liverpool example to boot.


but yes, generally speaking, SFHs packed that tightly together are a pretty extreme outlier in most of the US.
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Last edited by Steely Dan; Nov 17, 2022 at 8:59 PM.
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  #77  
Old Posted Nov 17, 2022, 10:05 PM
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Originally Posted by Steely Dan View Post
south philly packs in its rowhouses at a similar scale:

https://www.google.com/maps/@39.9257.../data=!3m1!1e3

and with narrower streets than the liverpool example to boot.


but yes, generally speaking, SFHs packed that tightly toggether are a pretty extreme outlie in most of the US.
So, in terms of urban math... my quick guesstimate is that you want, at minimum, an average of 1 household per 1,500 square feet of lot space to get a decent density. Many of these examples are more, but are in neighborhoods with lower density lots as well. So for example... for Minneapolis, it'd be 3 units per standard lot. For Chicago, that would be about 2 units per standard lot. And in Philly, 1 unit per row house lot (though many lots are smaller than 1500sqft). This is really rough estimate obviously, but what do you all think?
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  #78  
Old Posted Nov 17, 2022, 10:22 PM
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Originally Posted by Klippenstein View Post
So, in terms of urban math... my quick guesstimate is that you want, at minimum, an average of 1 household per 1,500 square feet of lot space to get a decent density. Many of these examples are more, but are in neighborhoods with lower density lots as well. So for example... for Minneapolis, it'd be 3 units per standard lot. For Chicago, that would be about 2 units per standard lot. And in Philly, 1 unit per row house lot (though many lots are smaller than 1500sqft). This is really rough estimate obviously, but what do you all think?
it's a decent enough, and very general, rule of thumb to use, but the width & density of street ROWs also would have to figure into any more finer-grained look at the situation.

also, at the census tract level, the presence of a large non-residential land-use, can have a pretty big swing on population density. up in my immediate neighborhood, our tract has a density of 26K ppsm, but the tract immediately south of us is only 20K ppsm depsite the fact that the built density of the residential streets between the two CTs is essentially identical.

the main reason for the discprenacy? the presence of a large full-block elementary school in the tract south of us that takes away approximately 40 city lots, and therefore ~100 housing units. when we're talking about a CT that only has ~650 households to begin with, that becomes a significant ding.
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  #79  
Old Posted Nov 17, 2022, 10:31 PM
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Ok, since I just reread the first post. I got more curious to know the area of a square block in Chicago. So it's about 225,000 sqft or .008 sq miles (just to be clear, this is measuring to the middle of the streets around the block). Which means there's about 125 blocks in a square mile. Assuming everything is uniform, (I know it's a big assumption) you'd need 208 people per block to equal 26000ppsm. If there's 2.3 people per household (the average in Chicago) then you need 90 households per block. The block I looked at had 44 lots. So that would be just slightly above 2 households per lot required for 26,000ppsm. Though the 2.6 average you got on your block probably better accounts for parks, commercial buildings and other nonresidential spaces. I mean Lincoln Square has a giant cemetery within its boundaries. So if that's accounted for in the total area than the households per lot would probably need to be closer to 2.6 like you estimated or perhaps the household size might need to be larger. I could see the household size being larger in Lincoln Square on average since it's a pretty family friendly area.
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  #80  
Old Posted Nov 17, 2022, 10:49 PM
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Ok, since I just reread the first post. I got more curious to know the area of a square block in Chicago. So it's about 225,000 sqft or .008 sq miles. Which means there's about 125 blocks in a square mile..
yeah, in the regular chicago street grid, there are 8 "long" blocks to the mile, and 16 "short" blocks to the mile in the other direction, making for 128 "regular" chicago blocks per square mile.

subtracting out street ROWs, this makes for an idealized block with approximately 600' x 250' of useable area, or 48 standard 25' x 125' lots, double loaded along the alley.

so, 48 lots per block x 128 blocks per square mile = 6,144 lots per sqaure mile

so if that square mile was built out entirely with bungalows, and if we use the rule of thumb that ~2.5 people occupy each detached SFH, that would yield a density of 15,360 ppsm.

and if we instead could stick an average of two chicago-style apartment flats on every lot, and if we use the rule of thumb that ~2.0 people occupy each of those units, then that yields a much more urbanism-conducive density of 24,576 ppsm.


once again, this is all super-idealized, the math never works this neatly in the real world. but it's also interesting to note how it's not that terribly far off either in many cases.

there's no square mile of land in chicago that is entirely standard size residential lots and nothing else, which is why in the exercise i did that started this thread, you typically need to get closer to an average of about 2.5 flat units per standard chicago lot to get to ~25K ppsm.
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"Missing middle" housing can be a great middle ground for many middle class families.

Last edited by Steely Dan; Nov 18, 2022 at 12:02 AM.
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