Community Resiliency by Design

In 2018, the Cape Cod Commission received a $100,000 Planning Assistance Grant from the Massachusetts Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs to develop a series of context-appropriate housing development prototypes that could deliver needed housing options at densities somewhere between the typical single-family, detached house and the large format multi-family, corridor building that are the dominant forms of residential development today. This effort, Community Resiliency by Design, carried out by the Cape Cod Commission and Union Studio, included various community engagement opportunities to garner feedback on the desired types of housing and strategies proposed while also helping demystify and alleviate concerns around the notion of increased density in appropriate locations. In many cases the prototypes were based on existing building typologies that could be found on the Cape, albeit in very limited numbers.