We are urban designers and architects who believe in the transformative power of beautiful, sustainable, walkable communities for all.

The success of the partnership between Opticos and the City of Memphis demonstrates what is possible when City and community priorities align around a visionary comprehensive plan. For five years, they have worked together on building local capacity and rehabilitating relationships between the City and the community early in the planning process. This laid a strong foundation for later implementation efforts of planning, coding, and design projects, which are quickly showing what it means for Memphis to “build up, not out” in its third century.

This excellent article, which features Opticos’ Mews Homes in Daybreak and a quote from Founding Principal Dan Parolek, reinforces that it is not just generally a lack of housing that is causing today’s housing crisis, but more specifically the lack of smaller, attainably-priced starter homes.

The primary reason behind writing “Missing Middle Housing: Thinking Big and Building Small to Respond to today’s Housing Crisis.”, and launching www.missingmiddlehousing.com as a free online resource, is because we want to see every town, city and state be successful when implementing Missing Middle Housing.