This House is Just Right: A Design Guide to Choosing a Home and Neighborhood

Americans buy more than 6 million homes each year. Because of suburban sprawl and high land prices, today's homebuyers must choose between remote locations that require long commutes on congested highways and the more compact homes in neighborhoods with houses on less land. This House is Just Right: A Design Guide to Choosing a Home and Neighborhood offers homebuyers a process of self-discovery to help them make good choices from the small-lot homes, town homes and condominiums that are close to job centers in metro areas. Readers gain the knowledge required to match a particular house and neighborhood to their needs for space, preferences for privacy, proximity to job, and social comfort. The book teaches fundamental evaluation skills such as how to read house and neighborhood plans and how to learn of the changes that development will bring to the community.

Dr. Linda L. Day is a contributing faculty member of Walden University, and an author who writes about home and neighborhood design. Her research on residential satisfaction includes 200 interviews with people who live in new, innovatively designed houses. Dr. Day has a Master's in Architecture and a Ph.D. in Urban Policy. She has published articles on the design and construction of detached and attached single family homes. Dr. Day served on the Architectural Review Commission of the City of San Luis Obispo, California, for four years, where she evaluated building and site design. As a practicing planner, Dr. Day worked with a firm specializing in redesigning many different kinds of buildings to better serve residents, workers and clients. Illustrator Biography R. Thomas Jones, A.I.A., is Professor and former Dean of the California Polytechnic State University College of Architecture and Environmental Design at San Luis Obispo, California. He is the architect of single and multi-family houses, the co-author of a book showcasing 84 housing developments, and a professional pen and ink renderer. He served as Director of Special Projects in the San Francisco Mayor's Office of Housing, and as Director of Architecture and Community Development at San Francisco's Asian Neighborhood Design.