Pretty Good Multi-Family Housing? – GreenBuildingAdvisor

The PGH organization (and all those behind the discussions) has done excellent work in pointing people toward workable solutions and goals for safe, durable, resilient, comfortable, efficient, and affordable residential housing.  Mostly, the focus is on single family housing.  And while much of the design advice is pertinent to all residential housing, it seems to me that a sub-section or addendum for multi-unit residential buildings could be helpful.  Is there any work being done in this area?

My questions are guided by my experience in looking for housing during many moves.  And by the fact that we need a lot more housing and we’re not going to get there by building single family residences.  But to get people to accept more multi-unit buildings, the buildings need to be better.  I think a lot of people might consider living in condos or apartments if the average condo/apartment wasn’t so crappy. (Ignoring what might be nice-looking kitchens that of course have re-circulating “vent” fans).

Specifically and for instance:

·      How to improve noise reduction, transmission, damping, etc so that every footstep isn’t telegraphed to people in the unit below and conversations aren’t heard thru walls?

·      How to isolate air so that each unit is ventilated with filtered fresh air, and not with cooking smells or skunky marijuana smells from neighbors that are unfortunately much more prevalent these days?

I know that there are building science articles that address these issues directly, but those aren’t summarized or easily assessable for most people, be they builders or end users.  It’d be nice to provide some affordable approaches to improving multi-unit housing and try to create some momentum with buildings that people actually enjoy.  If that information was in a digestible format and collected in one place (eg, PGH.org), I think it’d be a good and useful endeavor.

Wishing for too much? Or is something out there that I haven’t found?