Problem
The artificial separation of houses and work creates intolerable rifts in people’s inner lives.
Solution
Use zoning laws, neighborhood planning, tax incentives, and any other means available to scatter workplaces throughout the city. Prohibit large concentrations of work without family life around them. Prohibit large concentrations of family life without workplaces around them.
Related Patterns
… this pattern helps the gradual evolution of Mosaic of Subcultures (8), by placing families and work together, and so intensifying the emergence of highly differentiated subcultures, each with its own character…
The scattered work itself can take a great variety of forms. It an occur in belts of industry, where it is essential for an industry to occupy an acre or more between subcultures — Subculture Boundary (13), Industrial Ribbon (42); it can occur in work communities, which are scattered among the neighborhoods — Neighborhood Boundary (15), Work Community (41); and it can occur in individual workshops, right among the houses — Home Workshop (157). The size of each workshop is limited only by the nature of human groups and the process of self-governance. It is discussed in detail in Self-Governing Workshops and Offices (80).
Alexander, Christopher. A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction. Oxford University Press, 1977, p. 51