Manufacturing Urban Form: Could Mobile Home Parks Be Good Urbanism?

Problem, research strategy, and findingsManufactured home parks (MHPs), often called mobile home parks or trailer parks, are an important source of affordable housing in communities across the United States. These neighborhoods are understudied and stigmatized. In this article, we analyze morphological characteristics of MHPs that can affect many aspects of residents’ lives, asking: To what extent do manufactured home parks embody characteristics of desirable urban form? We present a multilayered analysis of MHPs in California’s San Francisco Bay Area, including assessment of the location of MHPs within the urban region and typomorphological analysis comparing a sample of MHPs with nearby site-built neighborhoods. We found that MHPs face locational disadvantages but compare favorably with respect to many morphological characteristics. We close by discussing how planning researchers and practitioners can expand upon beneficial aspects of MHPs while addressing residents’ challenges.Takeaway for practiceManufactured home parks suffer from many of the same morphological problems associated with other U.S. residential areas built after the mid-20th century, including disconnected street networks and homogenous land use patterns that limit walkability. Areas that host MHPs have social and environmental conditions that can place residents at a disadvantage, including pollution burden, poverty, and car dependence. Despite their locational challenges and stigma, MHPs exhibited many morphological characteristics associated with desirable urban form, including measures related to density, street networks, and street character. Efforts to preserve existing MHPs and plan new MHPs should be informed by both the advantages (e.g., affordability, density, walkable street networks) and challenges (e.g., separation from surrounding areas, tenure insecurity) of this form of neighborhood. Planners and urban designers have considerable opportunities to reform land use regulations and retrofit street networks to preserve, enhance, and grow the stock of well-located affordable housing in MHPs while improving walkability and connectivity.