Slate: “How about redoing the building code to make it possible to construct small apartment buildings like single-family homes—that is, quickly and cheaply? That’s what the Dallas City Council passed on Wednesday afternoon, making Dallas the first city in the country with a special set of rules for small apartment buildings—those that are smaller than 7,500 square feet and have eight units or fewer.
Those types of buildings, with regional variations that include Boston’s triple-deckers, Chicago’s three-flats, and L.A.’s dingbats, are often similar in size to large single-family homes. But they are in awfully short supply, thwarted by a gauntlet of restrictive land use laws—hence the nickname “missing middle.””