A Look at Home Designs: Traditional Neighborhood Design

While you're looking through house plan options, consider this question: Where would you rather live, a sprawling suburban wasteland or a mixed-use community where you can live, work, and play? If you chose the latter, you're not alone: traditional neighborhood design is making a comeback in urban construction and design circles. Here are the reasons we find these house plan designs so interesting:

• Scale:Traditional neighborhood design is similar to new urbanism, which acts on every scale of planning and development, from the floor plan of a building to the layout of a region. However, traditional neighborhood design is limited to the manageable scale of a neighborhood or town.
• Walking:Corner stores, restaurants, pubs, schools, and even a “village center” are within walking distance from where you'll build your home in traditional neighborhood design. Sidewalks are of utmost importance, leading to parks, recreation, and your friends' homes.
• Connection:A network of narrow streets connects one part of the neighborhood to another as well as slows traffic, a bonus if you're designing a home for a family with young children. In addition to primary streets are lanes that connect the garages typically located in the rear of the home. This improves the view from the street, too.
• Looks:From the tree-lined streets to the porches and verandas incorporated into the homs, traditional neighborhood design is beautiful as well as functional. This design can incorporate a variety of different floor plans for both public and private uses.

No matter what type of house plan you want to build, consider incorporating it into a traditional neighborhood design. Such a balanced community can serve a wide range of both business owners and homeowners.

Need more convincing of the merits of traditional neighborhood design? View our collection of traditional neighborhood design home plans.

Note: The home shown above is The Hilldale House Plan 21139.