Affordable landscapes: designing cost-effective and comfortable landscapes in Cottonwood Falls

Abstract

While innovative housing can be extremely beneficial for communities in need of affordable homes, these houses often ignore what can be done to make the surrounding landscape more sustainable and innovative. The outdoor living space is essential to the well-being of the residents, and a well-designed landscape can provide a multitude of benefits to the ecosystem as a whole. It can expand the home and encourage residents to be more active in their community. As housing in the United States is becoming increasingly unaffordable, more attention is being paid to public and private initiatives related to lowering housing costs. These strategies relate to house size, neighborhood layout efficiencies related to density and infrastructure, land acquisition costs, environmental regulation and compliance, and a host of other factors. Establishing and maintaining the landscape surrounding residential structures can also be a dominant part of monthly housing costs. While this report primarily focuses on affordability in the landscape, decisions on housing configuration play a large role. For example, if vehicle access and parking are spatially decoupled from individual homes, more flexibility for housing clustering is possible which has implications on how the surrounding landscape is designed and maintained. This report outlines how the costs of traditional residential landscapes can be reduced yet still be environmentally responsible and visually appealing. To best create guidelines to help these communities, it is important to assess current conditions. Forming a landscape profile of the target cities can help determine what will be needed. In addition, gathering information concerning maintenance and design services that are available, local plant nursery selection, and water usage data will help inform the guidelines. Cottonwood Falls, Kansas was chosen as an example community to create projective designs focusing on affordability. Traditional outdoor landscapes surrounding residential areas are typically composed of turfgrass lawns with low biodiversity, high maintenance costs, and negative environmental impacts. To assist homeowners, developers, and cities create more innovative landscapes to complement and support new affordable housing prototypes, this project will propose landscape guidelines that are aesthetic and support the enjoyment of comfortable outdoor spaces.