Drive through Seattle and this term will begin to seem synonymous with plain woodframe structures that crowd the streets like like weeds.

According to an article in the Seattle P-I,

Townhomes don’t have to be ugly and dampen the human spirit. But so many of them are eyesores that townhomes have become a lighting rod in the local debate over housing. They’ve been blamed for the decline of community and called a threat to single-family neighborhoods. Their rapid proliferation has even prompted recent City Council-led community forums… [But] townhomes aren’t the problem. … Bad design and laziness are the real problem.

There is also growing concern that the new crop of townhomes is not sustainable (for a discussion of this, as well as a thourough recounting of Seattle’s recent forum on townhomes, see Smarter Neighbors: Seattle Land Use Blog, Seattle Channel’s Planning, Land Use and Neighborhoods Committee, and the West Seattle Blog).

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