i had to head out to the burbs yesterday to do some field work at a suburban apartment complex that recently had a fire in one of the buildings.
it was one of those classic (in a bad way) suburban apartment complexes from the 70s, right down to the the 3 story brown brick veneer structures with mansard roofs, with about 300 units on 12 acres (25 units/acre).
on the surface of it, that's a decent enough unit density for the burbs, but then when you look at the context, it all falls apart.
all of the multi-family housing in the area is cordoned of into its own special little zone, complete with it own separate street system, and then surrounded by a sea of bog-standard suburban SFHs.
so in the above community, you either make enough money to buy a SFH and live among the middle class, or you're stuck renting at the apartment complex, designed to physically and psychologically separate you from the community around you. that's it, you get two choices: A or B. and they're not even really choices, just outcomes dependent on your household AGI.
so much of the above seems to defeat the actual benefit of multi-family housing (increased housing type diversity, leading to increased pop. density, leading to increased pedestrian orientation, etc.). contrast the above with my neighborhood below where SFHs, small multi-unit flats, and larger apartment buildings all coexist together cheek by jowl, mixed-up with each other, the way it's supposed to be.
as i walked around the complex in the first picture, i couldn't help but feel a bit depressed. how did we end up with this? we used to be able to build communities so much better.