I live in Amsterdam in the former social housing area where Anne Frank grew up. It was built in the 20s and is known as “the Amsterdam school” [1]. It is incred

I live in Amsterdam in the former social housing area where Anne Frank grew up. It was built in the 20s and is known as “the Amsterdam school” [1]. It is incredible: it is mostly lower than 5 floors (human scale), has a classic look and it provides just enough ornamentation for every building to be just slightly different from its neighbor. Inside the apartments, there are slight variations (eg, different stained glass work). It is truly brilliant large-scale community design that worked. It makes me wonder why we can’t offer cities around the world more “cut and paste” approaches? Not everything has to be brand new. Like, create 3-D models of communities and then drop in models of “architecture that works” from other cities. Communities could be involved in setting a vision for their own development. This would be a cheap way to create buy-in for density, if you could get a sense of what the community actually wants by presenting multiple options, rather than preparing millions on just one big proposal. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amsterdam_School https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amsterdam_School