Can you build an attractive and livable house in the same amount of space some suburbanites use to garage their cars?

John Kucher certainly thinks so. As executive director of Threshold Housing, a nonprofit development company in Seattle, he's spent the past decade on projects designed to show that small is beautiful - that detached dwellings of 1,000 square feet or less can be aesthetically appealing and highly marketable.

Across the United States, others are seeing the same sort of potential in smaller-scale living spaces, especially for the nation's population of singles.

In Tracy, Calif., for example, a new 135-acre housing project, designed to evoke memories of old northern California towns, is incorporating a number of 1,000-square-foot cottages, expected to sell for about $200,000.

There's also a growing backlash to the "McMansionization" of American housing, perhaps most visibly articulated by Minneapolis-based architect and author Sarah Susanka. Her 1998 book, "The Not So Big House," and its sequel, "Creating the Not So Big House," make the point that smaller-scale homes are more livable, enjoyable, and socially more responsible.

Mr. Kucher's enthusiasm for this approach grew out of his involvement with the award-winning Pine Street Cottages condominium project a decade ago. This rehab of 10 delapidated cottages, built in 1916, occurred in a modest Seattle neighborhood.

Although only 400 to 500 square feet, they sold right away for $85,000 to $87,000 to eight single women and two single men. Their architectural detail, efficient use of space, and contemporary amenities attracted not only buyers, but national media attention.

This success prompted interest in building cottages from the ground up, but the road hasn't been easy.

The greatest resistance, Kucher discovered, often comes from neighbors, who are concerned that cottage-style housing will lessen the value of their larger single-family homes.

While Kucher understands such reluctance, his experience indicates that cottages, when architecturally blended into existing neighborhoods, can be an asset.

In the mid-1990s, he helped the city write a cottage-housing ordinance in hopes of triggering a cottage-building revival. (Pine Street was a "grandfathered" project).

The city, however, adopted the ordinance only for multifamily housing zones, not for single-family zones, which predominate.

Complicating matters, Seattle moved to establish an urban-growth boundary without loosening zoning restrictions, which severely limited its options for creating much-needed new housing in established residential neighborhoods.

Eventually, however, city leaders recognized the value of establishing an innovative design program that grants zoning exemptions to selected projects.

Marcia Gamble Hadley, who headed up Threshold Housing at the time, says: "You can't broaden the palette of housing choices with abstract discussions and negotiations, nor can citizens make a judgment just looking at drawings and models. Our point to the city was that without actual experiments with on-the-ground housing types, you probably won't get away from detached, single-family houses on 5,000-square-foot lots...."

East Coast-style townhouses are not a particularly viable option, she observes, because "on the West Coast, our architectural settlement habits are so different. They generally look out of place."

One demonstration project that gained approval is the Ravenna Cottages complex, an eye-pleasing cluster of nine traditional-looking cottages and carriage houses a mile and a half north of downtown.

It wasn't an easy sell, even with a zoning exemption, since the neighbors had to approve.

"They initially were fearful of [the impact] on parking, traffic, and property values," Kucher says. "None of their fears [were realized], and now the neighbors are big supporters of what we've done."

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