Common Ground: Multi-Family Housing in Los Angeles

Los Angeles has been known the world over for its experimentation with lifestyle, and that has for decades been equated with the suburban single-family home situated on a rambling landscape, houses that gave the term “Ranch House” a citified meaning. However, Los Angeles has always been a city with exceptional experimentations in multi-family housing and author Frances Anderton traces that history. Today the City of Angels is already anticipating what other major metropolitan areas in the country will contend with—finding space to house the masses. Southern California architects are experimenting with new ways to approach multi-family housing, places to live that reinforce human connection to the term “home.”
As Los Angeles confronts a growing housing crisis, a city known for its single-family housing will inevitably shift toward a greater emphasis on apartments and other types of multi-family housing. Anderton’s book shows how connected dwellings work as good architecture and good social systems; multi-family housing itself will become an aspirational form of dwelling, not second in status or style to single family homes.Los Angeles has been known the world over for its experimentation with lifestyle, and that has for decades been equated with the suburban single-family home situated on a rambling landscape, houses that gave the term “Ranch House” a citified meaning. However, Los Angeles has always been a city with exceptional experimentations in multi-family housing and author Frances Anderton traces that history. Today the City of Angels is already anticipating what other major metropolitan areas in the country will contend with—finding space to house the masses. Southern California architects are experimenting with new ways to approach multi-family housing, places to live that reinforce human connection to the term “home.”