On Monday, Seattle's City Council is scheduled to vote on allowing detached backyard cottages in all of Seattle. Currently they are allowed in South Seattle, including our current neighborhood Mt. Baker/Columbia City. I know this issue has been discussed, debated and studied in Seattle for as long as I have been here (14 years) and I heard Diane Sugimura, Director Dept. of Planning & Development, state it's 30 years in the making. I have always felt this is a no-brainer solution to slightly increasing the density in residential neighborhoods...but the truth is, it doesn't really increase the density, because attached accessory units are already allowed. This just gives people another option. Place Architects worked with DPD to put together a very helpful guide to building a backyard cottage. It's actually a handy primer for any residential project, because it talks about site design, privacy, neighborhood compatibility, green design, universal design, financing, and construction. I recommend checking it out. (full disclosure: a bunch of RCA photos were used throughout the booklet as good examples.)
