Trend Towards Engagement Transforms America's Public Housing

Community Solutions, a New York nonprofit focused on affordable housing, is developing a 2.5-acre former industrial site in Hartford, Conn. with housing, a library, community garden and community center where residents can take cooking and nutrition classes, and rent a commercial kitchen for their food-based businesses.

This project exemplifies a trend across the U.S. in integrating community facilities with public housing, writes Ben Adler.

Based on interviews with New York City architects, Adler concludes that designing with demographic idiosyncrasies in mind is becoming increasingly popular, and necessary.

While seamlessly integrating public housing projects into the urban fabric and enlivening shared spaces through community facilities - whether on the ground floor of apartment buildings or on the street level in struggling neighborhoods - architects are tailoring even interior spaces to single-parent households, multigenerational families or single occupants.