Tacoma continues to make progress toward its goal to add 60,000 housing units by 2040. In alignment with the State’s Growth Management Act and an increasing awareness that the low-density development has not served the city well, Tacoma’s Comprehensive Plan calls for “a variety of residential densities and housing types.”
This is a remarkable shift in how Tacoma will build housing in the next two decades. Like most U.S. cities, Tacoma privileged the single-family detached home as its primary housing type throughout the 20th century. This predilection for low density has resulted in a number of unwanted outcomes in Tacoma and nearly all other U.S. cities, including a persistent shortage of housing stock (certainly affordable housing) and sprawl.
Single-family zoning has shaped the U.S. city into a very different type of place than cities in other parts of the world. According to Tacoma’s comp plan, “Tacoma’s current housing mix is predominantly single family — 62% of Tacoma’s housing units are detached single family structures…” This overabundance of a housing type that really does not belong in a proper city has come at a cost.
Outside of the U.S., the single-family detached home with a garage and a yard is a housing type people would expect to find outside of cities — suburbs and the countryside. This necessarily means that the cities we have in the U.S. are, if not anti-city, very city-like. (And it’s not only a matter of looks; the typical U.S. “urban” neighborhood delivers a decidedly anti-urban experience, too: it forces you into a car to get to most places, it’s not very walkable — in fact, it’s dangerous and too often deadly to people on foot or bikes — and outside of the summer block party, if you live on a street that has one, there isn’t a lot going on.)
Embracing city living: Attainable housing proximate to amenities
If we do indeed manage to diversify our housing types and densities as the comp plan says we will, then Tacoma’s next chapter will bring us closer to the experience of the city we want and deserve.
What type of homes define actual city living? The types of homes Tacoma and most U.S. cities lack: multi-unit and clustered housing, ranging from the duplex to the mixed-use housing that allows people to live near shopping and other amenities, if not the very places they work.
This type of housing delivers on two promises that, until now, few cities have actually delivered on: attainability and proximity.
The first of these, attainability, comes about as a result of having not just more housing stock, but more of the types of housing that people at different stages in their lives desire and can afford — apartments for people who are just establishing themselves or prefer not to take on the burdens of homeownership, duplexes, triplexes, and cottage courts for intergenerational families and older folks looking to downsize, townhomes and condominiums can provide starter homes and a solution for people who wish to own a home without also having to maintain a yard or who do not want to rely on a car.
The second of these, proximity, comes as a result of more efficient land uses; when every new home is not mandated to be on a minimum lot size, or to include parking, or to have a yard or two, other development can fit into city; a less sprawling city means that more of what we need on a daily basis is nearer to us. That includes people we want near, too.
Middle housing can’t be missing any longer
In planning terms, the type of housing Tacoma is looking to add is referred to as “middle housing;” when comparing cities as they exist around the world, most U.S. cities are missing this type of housing, so it makes sense to add it.
I mention this because detractors of density tend to point to large, world-class cities and their tall residential towers as the inevitable outcome of turning away from single-family residential zoning. Tacoma is not looking to add a 58-floor residential tower to the city. Tacoma is looking to add new housing that is diverse in type and density, and which matches the existing architectural styles that are already represented in its various neighborhoods.
Imagine a neighborhood characterized by its collection of Northwest craftsman homes. New development in this neighborhood might look like a set of duplexes that are slightly larger versions of the existing craftsman homes in the neighborhood.
A neighborhood that is already well-served by transit and that is anchored by a commercial district might look to add greater density by including five-story apartments where the bottom floor holds retail and eateries.
A neighborhood that boasts a middle school and an elementary school may add a collection of bungalows that face an interior courtyard. And a neighborhood that features 1970s split-levels might add a row of townhouses to transition it into a denser neighborhood down the road.
Housing form shapes social patterns
It’s remarkable how much a city’s housing stock defines its character. For nearly 100 years, the U.S. shaped its cities — and the social life in them — by catering to anti-urban ideologies through land-use and housing policies that dictated housing that really does not belong in the city. We are now living with the consequences of that.
Re-forming the city and life in it begins by including more and different types of housing. Some may say that the reforms that Tacoma is putting its place through its comp plan and Home in Tacoma amount to social engineering and the imposition of social housing, but isn’t that precisely what we have been doing for decades now, shaping the social through housing policy? Through zoning ordinances, restrictive covenants, redlining, and the Federal Housing Act of 1934 we have long been directing where people should live, and how.
These land-use practices have made it so that the typical U.S. city presents us with a compromise that doesn’t serve anyone particularly well. Homes are scarce and unaffordable, we have become car-dependent and expend too much time traveling to and from places, municipal budgets are stretched thin in trying to keep up with the ever-expanding costs of sprawl, and our social life is wanting.
Tacoma and its residents are poised to benefit from the increase and diversification coming to its housing stock. If we can also somehow manage to reduce the number of cars on our city streets, then we will have a true city, a place where we access and proximity define our daily life.
Rubén Casas
Rubén joined The Urbanist's board in 2022. He is a scholar and teacher of rhetoric and writing at the University of Washington Tacoma. He is also the faculty lead of the Urban Environmental Justice Initiative at Urban@UW. In his work and advocacy, Rubén examines how cities and the institutions that comprise them imagine, plan, and build in ways that promote and/or discourage community and a sense of place.
