The future of single-family detached housing

摘要

Betsy Schneider's intriguing "haunted house" photograph on the cover of this issue conjures up an important, if overlooked, question in the study of urbanism: what is the role of the single-family detached house in sustainable cities?rnThere is little point debating whether single-family detached houses are inherently "good" or "bad" - after all, so many people live in single-family detached houses that branding them as something perverse serves little purpose. The more important question is whether the single-family house has a role to play in future endeavors to build more sustain-ably. Might we need detached housing as a way to embed green space and localize food production? Or is the single-family house a form whose time has come and gone, now so problematic that we should only be thinking in terms of densifying the existing stock?