Advocacy Roundtable: Lessons Learned from Missing Middle Typologies

Each month, the AIA Austin Advocacy Roundtable brings together professionals to discuss strategies individual professionals, practices, and AIA Austin can take to proactively advocate for issues important to our members and the larger community. This month’s roundtable brings together practitioners with direct experience delivering Missing Middle housing, ranging from three-unit HOME developments to small multifamily buildings, for a candid discussion of the lessons they learned.

The conversation will be grounded in real world insights: what worked, what didn’t, and what surprised them. Topics will include the practical challenges specific to these typologies, such as parking strategies, trash and utility servicing, attached vs. detached configurations, shared tenant space design, building management, and how these projects actually perform in the market. Keith Mars, Director of Austin Development Services, will join the panel, bringing a regulatory and review-process perspective alongside the practitioners’ on-the-ground experience.

Learning Objectives

1. Identify site planning and unit configuration strategies, including parking, utility access, trash service, and attached versus detached arrangements, that have proven effective in the design and permitting of small-scale multifamily housing in Austin.
2. Analyze the regulatory and permitting constraints most commonly encountered in 3-to-20 unit residential projects, drawing on practitioner experience and the perspective of Austin’s Development Services Department.
3. Compare the design and management challenges associated with shared tenant spaces, building operations, and market reception across missing middle housing typologies, using case studies from Austin practitioners.
4. Apply lessons learned from built and unbuilt missing middle projects to identify creative solutions and anticipate common obstacles in future small-scale multifamily design and development.