A different take on affordable housing on the Cool Town Studios blog. I'm not convinced the same solution would apply in the UK, where houses are already pretty small, but good design does no one any harm! I not too the same distrust in the US of any suggestion of increasing density.
Strange as it seems, the US zoning laws are much more prescriptive than any housing allocations would be in a local plan in the UK. As far as I can tell many zonings in the US context would be impossible in a UK plan and would be ultra vires - single family housing on minimum plot sizes for example.