Spotlight! CityLab!

“An exploration of living small as a potential driver of economic development, Tiny Houses are part of our 6% Place experiment. Follow along with our Tiny House Journal as we build Garfield’s first Tiny House!”

Ok, I might be late to this party but this weeks spotlight is brand new to me and very exciting!  Perhaps it is more exciting and surprising because my house is mentioned and thoughtfully examined and I didn’t even know!  If you haven’t checked it out then please do so with me, CityLab.  Their mission statement is “cityLAB is a nonprofit that performs experiments with the city as our laboratory. Experiments are chosen to seed economic development, generate buzz, and effect positive change in the city, from inside and out.” Here is a list of their experiments.  They are currently doing a tiny house experiment in Pittsburg.  They have held some planning session (read about here and here <- these links are where my house makes a visit)and have decided on my favorite tiny house design to move their expiriment forward, the MiniM house (not Hazel this time…).  [I just LOVE the MiniM house, there is so much creativity in it, it makes me second guess my decision to not build wider…  That extra two feet opens up a lot of possibilities (but makes moving trickier)].  I love that it was the favorite because I think it is going to make the expiriment a lot better as I think that (even though I personally LOVE my house) the MiniM house is one of the most livable tiny houses for a wider swath of people!

Another excerpt from their site about this particular venture:

“Late last year, when we held the Tiny Houses brainstorming session, we heard that people were not all that concerned with the design of their Tiny Houses. What were they worried about? Everything else: how to find and buy the land on which to build a Tiny House, how to navigate zoning and permitting, how to prepare the land for a house, how to build (with or without a contractor) and how to finance the construction of a Tiny House. So we decided to change our approach. Our goal is to lower the barriers to entry for potential Tiny House builders in Garfield. We are going to do that by showing you how to build a Tiny House in Garfield.” (<—how cool is that!)

My gosh I am just so excited to read more, this is a real, fact based experiment on how things will go in a city situation! It’s public, has city involvement, it’s been rolling forward for about 6 months and it is answering a lot of really great questions!  See their first brainstorming session here (I see some familiar photos!) then you can continue through their posts from there.  Show some support if you feel so inclinedby leaving them a comment or two on their site!

You can find their Facebook Page HERE

Their website HERE, the part specifically about tiny houses HERE