Sacramento Adopts One of the Most Progressive Missing Middle Strategies in the U.S.

Since our last update on the City of Sacramento, the Sacramento City Council unanimously adopted the Missing Middle Housing Interim Ordinance, becoming the first in California to allow multi-unit housing in every neighborhood. The Missing Middle Housing (MMH) Interim Ordinance is the outcome of a multi-year, comprehensive Missing Middle Housing Study led by Opticos in partnership with Cascadia Partners, Unseen Heroes, and Bill Lennertz. The Ordinance went into effect on October 17, 2024, and includes innovative tools like the sliding scale FAR to incentivize smaller, incremental housing that is more attainable for its community.  

2023 Missing Middle Solutions and Car-Free Urbanism Road Tour

Opticos is hitting the road! Come join Daniel Parolek at one of his upcoming speaking events to discuss all things walkable urbanism-related, including the state of Missing Middle Housing applications around the world, including Opticos’ latest Missing Middle Scans and Deep Dives™, a County-wide Zoning Toolkit for Marin County intended to deliver much-needed housing options, and Housing Plans for various cities including Modesto and Sacramento, California, the latest updates on the implementation of Culdesac Tempe, the county’s first car-free community built from scratch and Prairie Queen, the country’s first 100% Missing Middle Neighborhood which utilizes the Missing Middle Neighborhood Kit™. There will be some frank discussions about existing barriers for implementing walkable urbanism, why we have not made more progress enabling it, and what organizations are leading the way in these conversations.  

Reflecting on the New York Times Article “What Happened to the Starter Home”

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.

If You Want Safe Streets, Buy a Better Fire Engine

That lesson was brought home, once again, by the Opticos team’s work on a recent downtown plan. Our team had encountered a typical American conflict. Many community members wanted walkable streets, with wide sidewalks, protected bicycle lanes, slow-moving traffic, and ample room for trees, flowers, and sidewalk cafés. The fire department wanted wide, unobstructed swathes of asphalt. This conflict between community members’ desire for low-speed streets, with a high level of traffic safety, and a fire department’s desire for wide, high-speed roads is frequent in the United States. But in Europe, it is rare.

How a Form-Based Code Generated over $500 Million in Downtown Infill Projects and Transformed a Sleepy Downtown

In 2014, Opticos Design worked with the City of Mesa, Arizona to create a Master Plan and Form-Based Code (FBC) that would provide incentives for redevelopment in their downtown core and along a five-mile stretch of Main Street. The Plan and Code focused development around three new transit stations to allow for a network of new walkable, public spaces. Prior to the adoption of the plan and FBC, there had been no private-sector investment in downtown Mesa in over three decades.