This pocket neighborhood for a rural timber production community in central Arkansas triangulates three concepts: addressing local construction market failures through prefabricated off-site construction with high energy efficiencies, creating housing affordability, and building a sense of place that promotes sociability. The pocket neighborhood is a new real estate product for middle America substituting shared neighborhood greens for front yards and car parking in garages at the front of the house. Pocket neighborhood planning introduces a “shared street” with rain gardens and bioswales in the space of the street and alley. The “green street” reduces the need for hard-engineered and costly underground drainage—40 percent of street costs in the southeast. Here, the street is an ecological and social asset rather than a liability. Prefabricated housing construction incorporates SIPs (Structural Insulated Panels) technology, a wood-and-foam sandwich panel that recycles wood waste streams with insulative R-values meeting Passive House net-zero standards.
Sponsor
U.S. Department of Agriculture – Forest Service
Client
ARplanit, LLC
