A Beautiful, yet unfortunately unrealized, project that came out of the Hill Neighborhood Union (HNU) was the Hill Cooperative Housing plan (HCH).

In 1966, architects and city planners worked with members of the HNU to “design what they called ‘a new kind of housing project,’” in which those who designed the building “would be the future residents and cooperative owners of the project.”

“The HCH plan included stores as well as housing in order to ‘help two of the families get off welfare’ and help other members of the group ‘make a better living doing something they really wanted to do’—run a store and serve customers. The community would include a day care, sports facilities, access to shared auto repair equipment, and arts resources, such as a kiln for firing pottery…” One resident “requested ‘only one private space—a combination bedroom and study,’ but wanted the rest of the apartment to be ‘very open and public’ so people ‘would feel free to drop in at any time.’ In every respect, the desires and imaginations of these regular and quite diverse Hill families challenged familiar notions of the sanctity of private property, and the conventional middle-class ideal that dominated new urban designs of the time. The requests called for a complete reorientation of 1960s understandings of urban space, and a reconsideration of the impulse to compartmentalize groups, functions, and economies within the city.”

Model City Blues