And Mr. Bellerive said, "You, too?" After that, the government hired a London firm to solicit and sift through proposals for "the best, safest and most sustainable housing designs of the future.
Perhaps the most unusual of the housing designs that the program has generated so far is Ms. Fogliano's 135-unit full-block development in the north Bronx, on land bounded by Tillotson, Palmer and Given Avenues near Interstate 95.
"We've got a lot of housing to do in this country and it would be absolutely fascinating to use it as a test bed for new housing designs that worked in a zero-energy way.
Echoes of this admiration can be found in the modern variations on the saltbox and other Colonial-derived vernacular housing designs that are ubiquitous in suburban developments nationwide, with a fair share in 20th-century Long Island communities like Levittown.
Similarly, while Sennett rightly bemoans the effects of Corbusian planning of characterless, instant cities made of identikit towers he might have cited any number of modernist housing designs in which the cité thrived.
On Tuesday at 6 30 p.m., a discussion about affordable housing in the city and housing designs for the future will feature Constance Rosenblum, a reporter for the Real Estate section of The New York Times and the author of "Habitats: Private Lives in the Big City".
