The South Street Cottages project in Fayetteville, Arkansas, began with the acknowledgment that reducing minimum lot sizes could unlock the potential for smaller, more affordable homes while meeting the needs of the community.
By working with the city to reduce minimum lot sizes, we were able to build 28 homes on a parcel that would have otherwise only accommodated seven. Each home sold quickly, with attainable total prices. Best of all, many of the buyers were young families, retirees and single professionals who might otherwise have been shut out of the housing market.
In 2016, I joined the Incremental Development Alliance and moved from renovating and flipping old houses on the side to tackling my first land and new construction development. In collaboration with forward-thinking city officials and planners, I identified a site that was well-suited for a pilot project: an oversized parcel in a walkable neighborhood close to public transit, schools and parks.
The existing zoning required minimum lot sizes of 10,000 square feet, which would have limited the number of homes we could build and driven up per-unit costs. I proposed rezoning the area to one of our town’s downtown zoning districts. This would allow for very small lot width minimums (18 feet) and no minimum lot sizes — a dramatic change, but one grounded in thoughtful design and community engagement.
To build community support, I held workshops and listening sessions with residents — the most popular was a pop-up petting zoo where after-school classes could pet goats and learn about civic engagement and the development process. We addressed neighbors' concerns face-to-face and emphasized the benefits of smaller lots, such as attracting first-time homebuyers and creating a neighborhood that feels cohesive and human-scaled.
Once the reduced lot sizes were approved, we set out to design homes that were both affordable and desirable. Being a hillside town meant that the site sloped significantly from the back corner to the street. As both an architect and a landscape architect, I designed this topography into terraces to create a series of small-lot single-family homes, some of which had garage apartments. I tucked a townhouse courtyard into the back and put a small, mixed-use building in the corner.
The smaller lots naturally lent themselves to compact, efficient designs for households of one or two people. The largest corner home had three bedrooms and a playroom. Each home was designed to maximize usable space, with open floor plans, high ceilings and plenty of natural light. By minimizing setbacks and carefully planning shared green spaces, we created a sense of community while maintaining privacy for individual homeowners.
We also prioritized sustainability. Smaller homes naturally mean lower utility bills. We also incorporated elements like high-performance insulation and native landscaping to further reduce environmental impact. These features not only appealed to buyers but also helped lower ongoing costs, making the homes even more accessible to residents on a budget.
I’ve slowly developed the street-facing houses in sets of three over the last eight years. These houses sit on lots as small as 1,500 square feet — a fraction of the lot minimum allowed under the previous zoning — and range in size from 500 square feet to 2,200 square feet. Two of them met federal affordability standards without subsidy. This affordability is directly achieved by their small size and small lot — the price per square foot is high for the neighborhood and has caused many older neighboring homes to appreciate in value in response.
