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.  

From the Archives: Evolving a New Urbanist Icon—Seaside, Florida’s Town Square and Beachfront

In the early 2000’s Seaside Town Founder Robert Davis called me out of the blue to ask if we would work with him, his wife and Seaside co-founder Daryl Davis, and their team to work on a plan that would allow the town square and beachfront of Seaside—which was designed with temporary one story wood structures—to evolve into something more permanent but doing so in a way that did not compromise the Seaside charm and character that they had so thoughtfully orchestrated/created.

Objective Design and Development Standards: More Housing, Great Places

Objective Design and Development Standards (ODDS) have been getting a lot of attention lately as laws are passed across the country seeking to streamline new housing developments. Requirements by states to include ODDS in local zoning codes mean big changes to the way many communities currently regulate and review development.

Objective Design and Development Standards: Empowering Planners to Enable Great Places

In our first post, we introduced Objective Design and Development Standards (ODDS), wrote about its origins, its impact on housing production, and shared some common opinions about ODDS. We called for Planners to use ODDS to engage in housing production, placemaking and community design to a greater extent than they often do now. Here are some ways we think Planners can do just that. 

Bringing Middle Housing to Washington Cities and Towns

Opticos Design recently produced a Toolkit for the State of Washington to help bring more Middle Housing to cities and towns as part of their “Planning for Housing” initiative