Tucson launches survey on middle-housing designs

Tucson residents have about three weeks to decide which middle-housing designs would best suit their neighborhoods.

City officials announced Friday that residents have until 5 p.m. Oct. 22 to rank their top three favorites of 50 different designs and their prospective locations, which the city gathered by holding a contest from July to September.

The contest invited local architects, engineers, designers and other building professionals to submit plans that could be pre-approved and quickly made available to the city’s property owners.

Some designs can be built in different sizes or styles and the number of units included can vary.

The selected designs will be added to Tucson’s Casita Model Plan Library, which currently includes only pre-approved building plans for casitas but will grow into a repository for different types of housing. Saving the middle-housing designs for future use will make it more expeditious to build housing, according to Tucson officials.

The city plans to assess the results, plus the feedback of a committee comprised of architects and design professionals, to select 15 designs as model plans and waive building review fees. Anyone whose work is selected also gets a $1,000 award.

Middle-housing is defined by Tucson as “smaller-scale residential buildings that fall between single-family homes and large apartment complexes.” The state of Arizona says duplexes, triplexes, fourplexes and townhomes are all forms of middle-housing.

The Tucson City Council voted in December to allow middle-housing to be built on most residential lots, which became effective at the start of 2026.

Prior to the city vote, the state passed a law requiring cities with a population of at least 75,000 to allow middle-housing developments on all lots zoned for single-family homes within a mile of the city’s central business district or on at least 20 percent of any new development of 10 or more contiguous acres.