Trading asphalt for housing and amenities

[NEW YORK] WHAT is the solution to affordable housing in New York?

One number has been repeated over and over - 200,000 subsidised units, to be built or preserved over a decade. Mayor Bill de Blasio promised it, but has yet to explain how he'll get there.

Here are two other numbers: 9 x 18. In square feet, that's 162, smaller than the most micro micro-apartment.

It is the size of a typical parking space. That lowly slice of asphalt has prompted three young architects - Miriam Peterson, Sagi Golan and Nathan Rich, fellows at the Institute for Public Architecture - to come up with what could be an innovative way to ease the housing crisis.

The proposal is intriguing because it's about more than apartment buildings plopped onto vacant land. It considers how parking spaces - mandated in outmoded zoning regulations, prolific at public housing sites - might be leveraged into something more ambitious, something that encourages a mix of housing in active neighbourhoods with accessible transit, public services and lively streets. In effe…