Missing Middle

The cottage court is one of the most powerful housing ideas America ever produced — and then forgot about for seventy years. Not an apartment complex, not a subdivision: small individual homes arranged around a shared garden, each with its own front door, its own porch, its own sense of home. In this first article in our missing middle series, we look at why the cottage court disappeared, why it's coming back, and what makes it work when it's done right.