The American Dream in Flux

Time stands still in San Francisco’s Sunset District. The American Dream Home of the 1950’s - the middle-class ideal of home ownership defined by a private backyard and two car garage rules. 21st century economic, social and environmental realities highlight the need to redefine this dream. As society grapples with challenges including homelessness, a changing climate and social fragmentation, new forms of housing are at the forefront of urban transformation. Home, in our post pandemic cities, has taken on new meaning as live/work merge and walkable neighborhoods take on new importance in the American city.

San Francisco’s housing crisis has grown acute during the tech boom, but the root cause goes back to the 1970’s when large portions of the city were “down-zoned” to single-family-only land use. Now 70% of the west side of San Francisco is exclusively single-family and these areas have seen little housing construction for decades. Stymied growth coupled with the accelerating cost of housing, both sole ownership and rental, means the city lacks dwellings for its middle and working class residents. While the city’s east side has recently sprouted a crop of luxury high-rises for the wealthy, the west side, encompassing more than half the city’s overall land area, has remained the same low residential density since the 1940’s. Addressing the “Missing Middle,” both in terms of income (from working class families to young professionals) and neighborhood scale, is the focus of this design proposal.

Our strategy calls for a mid-scale urban density comprised of multi-unit buildings along transit lines as well as up-zoning single family homes to 4 and 10 units. These dual approaches would offer a variety of dwelling types to serve a diversity of residents, add vibrancy to street life, and contribute to environmental sustainability. Taking cues from Jane Jacobs, who advocated for residential density similar to her West Village neighborhood in Manhattan (100 units per acre), our proposal describes a human-scaled neighborhood of 6 story buildings. Environmental strategies including greening the streets with tree planting and climate responsive building forms suggest a pattern for a more resilient and sustainable urban fabric. 

These design strategies define our proposal to San Francisco's government officials and urban planners. We challenge them to look beyond the city’s core to the westside neighborhoods for opportunities to address the housing crisis. The increased housing density illustrated here could provide more than 20,000 of the 82,000 housing units California law mandates. We believe that adding middle scale density along transit lines and transforming single family parcels into multi-unit buildings can offer diverse, affordable housing options, enabling working class families, teachers, healthcare workers and other vital members of our local citizenry to return to the city where they work.

Design Team:

Sarah Willmer
Khulan Batsaikhan
Daniel Barrio
Yu Hsin Li
Hoda Harraz

Consultant:
James K. Stickley (Wallace Roberts & Todd, LLC) – Landscape Architect

Model by Gemmiti Model Art