I didn’t know until a few weeks ago that pocket neighborhoods had a direct historical precedent. A design that closely parallels the pocket neighborhood was a trend termed the “bungalow court” and it emerged in the early 1900s.  The house I grew up in, as well as the first home my husband and I purchased were Craftsman Bungalows both built in the early 1920s. Its crazy to me how much life echoes and dovetails and circles back on itself, but needless to say, bungalows are a house style that charm the pants off me, and that I’m only realizing all these little connections now, is beyond super cool to me.

This book of floorplans by Gustav Stickley I should probably just buy for myself because I’ve borrowed it from our old library probably 5 or 6 different times. I love looking at the floorplans and the styling of the craftsman movement, and similar to village layouts, designing floorplans is my own little puzzle game I like to play.

But back to bungalow courts: Pasadena California in 1909, a man by the name of Sylvanus Marston submitted plans to the city for eleven houses to be built on a single lot. He planned to market them to wealthy Midwesterners who came to California on vacation. The houses all faced a central courtyard alleyway and this was the first of several “bungalow courts” that would come into being over the next two decades.
 
Bungalow courts became a neighborhood model that made detatched homeownership available to a wider range of people. From Walt Disney animators and Hollywood stars to residents of lesser means, these clusters of modest sized homes meant that single family dwellings were affordable.
 
The bungalow court model preceeded the pocket neighborhood by nearly a century and informed its unfolding. There are slight nuances: more consideration for privacy with strategic window placement, front porches with “perch-able railings” to encourage conversation when the opportunity presents. The first pocket neighborhood: Third Street Cottages was stylized in the bungalow fashion, and Ross Chapin, the architect/designer has even made note that the pocket neighborhood concept doesn’t need to be executed in a bungalow style, but could be built with almost any aesthetic.

What came between these two movements and why people are cycling back toward an intentionally close but detatched housing situation is worth considering.  Some voices in our society today are drawing attention to the fact that there is a housing opportunity gap, termed the Missing Middle, where between mid-rise apartments and detatched single family homes there are a range of housing options that would contribute to a walkable urbanism that just aren’t being built enough to meet the housing needs of the current demographics.

I would argue that the microvillage design similarly fills a gap between suburban and rural, whereby strategically hybridizing the two would provide residents a better walkable local community and support network without the density of the suburbs or the isolation of rural living.

 Pocket neighborhoods were one of the seed ideas that developed into the microvillage design. Ross Chapin, architect and designer, coined the term in the mid-nineties. If this term is new to you, you can find out a wealth of information on his website.

​He's also written a book, Pocket Neighborhoods: Creating Small-Scale Community in a Large-Scale World.

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 But essentially it is a neighborhood design that nestles houses together around semi-private courtyard or garden space in order to increase community

​ Microvillages and pocket neighborhoods share many common traits: removing the primacy of the car, increasing community interaction, common green spaces, prioritizing privacy, and creating intentional and secluded neighborhoods. They part ways in matters of scale, density, accessibility, and the integration of residential and small business spaces.

The pocket neighborhood has a max capacity of 8-12 homes. Beyond this multiple clusters can be designed to pocket near one another but they are more or less distinct from each other. The microvillage could be a pocket neighborhood, or it could become very close to being its own village. Larger microvillages may be made up of smaller clusters, but still are united by one central village green.

 Microvillages prioritize agricultural spaces and sustainable capacities when possible. Pocket neighborhoods are denser neighborhoods with heightened design considerations to maintain privacy (I.e. north facing walls have windows and south facing have high windows and/or skylights so the houses can be clustered very closely).

​Pocket neighborhoods frequently have parking spaces away from residences while the microvillage is based off an inverted cul-de-sac. (Houses are clustered around a common green rather than a paved circle or street) Every house has road access, it is just on the exterior of the neighborhood instead of the center. 

 The microvillage is like a tiny village, and some designs include clustered areas for small businesses. There would never be a Walmart, but there may be a row of shopfronts. There might be a grocer, a library, and a laundromat, a cafe, and a bed and breakfast. Whereas the pocket neighborhood is strictly a residential "neighborhood within a neighborhood." ​

​Microvillages and pocket neighborhoods are both exciting and novel improvements on the traditional neighborhood model of the past century. They both hearken back to neighborhood arrangements of previous eras (more on this to follow!) and at the same time, push forward and help us to consider, how might our spaces be better organized to serve the people who live there?