Based on ten weeks of work to determine what makes a 15-minute neighborhood, our team was tasked with understanding how this model could fit within the Seattle context. Seattle’s Urban Village model creates an ideal environment for a 15-minute neighborhood, but it is lacking in homeownership opportunities. The majority of new builds in Uban Villages are rental-focused apartment complexes, but there is a notable lack of middle housing typologies. These typologies allow for density while creating fee-simple homeownership opportunities at a lower cost than a typical single-family home.

Our team worked for the remaining ten weeks to understand how Seattle’s zoning impacts the ability to build middle-housing homeownership opportunities. Scroll through the PowerPoint below to see the outcome of this study.