Other American cities

What exists

A university town on BART with real commercial corridors and a downtown (C-DMU) already zoned for the mid-rise band. Political appetite for housing is genuine.

Where it lands

University, San Pablo, Telegraph, Shattuck, Fourth — plus the recode option on any tired walk-up. The full case is the proposal chapter.

The distinctive obstacle

Land cost, and neighbors who fight height with practiced skill. The answer is a building so evidently good-neighborly that the fight changes shape.

What exists

Swan's Market already exists — courtyard cohousing in a rebuilt 1917 market, two blocks from BART. More industrial fabric, more big roofs, slightly more room to move than San Francisco.

Where it lands

Reuse first: Old Oakland, Jack London, the industrial seams. The Sargfabrik method fits Oakland better than almost anywhere in the country.

The distinctive obstacle

Disinvestment and displacement pressure cut both ways — the tenure story (CLT, limited equity) matters even more than the architecture here.

What exists

In places, the finest street grain in the US, and working land trusts. The city already knows the mixed-use street wall from North Beach to the Mission.

Where it lands

Corridor mid-rise where recent family-zoning and corridor reforms open height; parcels the market finds awkward — too deep, too odd — are the co-op's friends.

The distinctive obstacle

Height jumps and cost. Between 40 ft and the tower there is a canyon of process; crossing it takes the patience only a resident-client has.

What exists

LA Eco-Village has run a retrofit commons culture for decades. And LA has thousands of miles of arterial strips — under-built, over-parked, transit slowly arriving.

Where it lands

The boulevards: a courtyard block every few hundred meters would grow street walls on Vermont or Venice the way Berlin grew them on its radials. The courtyard tradition (bungalow courts) is native here.

The distinctive obstacle

Parking and setbacks are the enemy in their purest form — the type only works where the stall count no longer designs the building.

What exists

Courtyard tenements existed — the old-law dumbbell was a courtyard building whose court shrank to an airshaft. The lesson is not 'no courtyards'; it is 'no fake ones.'

Where it lands

Fine-grained Brooklyn and Queens streets over the outer-borough corridors — mid-rise perimeter blocks with a generous Hof, not towers in plazas.

The distinctive obstacle

Land price makes the 40–80 ft courtyard the single hardest line in the brief to hold. Public or trust land is nearly a precondition.

What exists

A hot, bright city critically short of shade and cross-ventilation — exactly what the type manufactures. La Borda's patio-as-chimney is a cooling diagram before it is a social one.

Where it lands

The gridded neighborhoods off the high-rise spine, where mid-rise still meets the sidewalk and arcades have local precedent.

The distinctive obstacle

Flood elevation pushes ground floors up and parking podiums in — the street wall and the raised court have to be designed together, Kalkbreite-style, or the sidewalk dies.