Thank you to everyone who participated and those who made this possible! Learn more and view runner-up submissions at singlestair.com.

@eastbayforeveryone.bsky.social
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@strongtowns.org

Portland Award First Place Winner: Inner Garden

Inner Garden is a single-stair courtyard building where homes face a shared green center, bringing in light and air while encouraging quiet social interaction through balconies and open stairs.

San Francisco Award First Place Winner: Steplight

Steplight reimagines the traditional lightwell as stepped terraces and balconies that bring light and air into more homes while fitting naturally into the street and creating shared outdoor space.

Austin Award First Place Winner: Cadavre Exquis

Cadavre Exquis is a mid-rise housing block with flexible apartments arranged around a green courtyard, combining a strong street presence with adaptable living spaces and shared outdoor areas.

This competition isn’t about stairs — it’s about unlocking bright, airy homes and beautiful architecture. Changing building codes to allow single-staircases enables family-sized homes on small lots that create an inviting and inspring urban fabric.

The LCI hopes to open up thousands of previously undevelopable parcels, and support small builders with streamlining and pre-approved Standard Plans. LCI will avoid the issue of displacement by limiting developments to commercial sites where no housing currently exists.

Focusing on parcel-by-parcel development democratizes building by creating opportunities for mom and pop local builders – not hedge funds or private equity firms – to develop housing on their own lots for themselves, family, friends, or for income.

LCI aims its policy incentives at un-assembled parcels, not half-block sized development sites, as lot assembly drives up the cost of land by 30%. Eliminating the need to assemble parcels lowers costs for building housing, making affordable housing models economically feasible.

The focus is on building homes along under-utilized commercial corridors, while simultaneously transforming those same corridors to be livable, accessible, equitable and healthy.

The idea is to create something bigger than housing -- building communities -- with an abundance of attainable home ownership and affordable housing and a charming walkable street for everyone. This is the Livable Communties plan: lci-la.com

Instead, cities pick streets to become destinations and 'Town Centers', improve the street, and encourage every parcel owner to build by making it easy, low risk, and worth their while.

This also means the housing density is much higher than LA's Housing Element assumes (ie, the p(dev)), because the plan isn't random: wait for someone to sell, hope it gets developed, thus creating random density across the city.

But how do we get all the parcel owners to sell to developers? What if we don't have to? Instead, encourage the individual parcel owners to build by creating a program with pre-entitled, off-the-shelf Standard Plans -- while transforming the street for livability and shared public amenities.

(3) Aesthetically pleasing, coherent streets can also be built 'cookie cutter' using the same set of architectural plans over and over, with different facades. What makes it pleasing can also lower the cost of construction with pre-entitled Standard Plans, streamlining, and economies of scale.

...While monolithic, random, jarring, incoherent buildings and streets stress us out -- and turns people away from density.

What makes a street aesthetically appealing? People are drawn 'order & variation' -- predictable heights and an urban fabric where elements 'belong together' and don’t overwhelm the sensory system with randomness and chaos. Coherent streets actually lower stress levels.

Vibrant retail means residents have a wide range of shops to meet their daily and weekly needs, and can live car-light, lowering the cost of living and raising quality of life.

(2) For housing that is residential over retail in a '15 minute' neighborhood, a high quality street draws people to shop, linger & stroll, helping retail thrive.

Here is a video explaining how we are drawn to places that combine 'order & variety.'