THE BUILDER’S LINE
By Christopher D. Moise, OAA, FRAIC
The following story is a fictionalized account that combines several true stories. The protagonist, Rowan St. James, is a fictional urban designer living in the fictional city of Greybridge. While his experiences echo real tensions in city building, the events and setting are entirely imagined.
Urban designers don’t always get to choose the stories they’re dropped into. Sometimes, they just arrive with a site plan and a clipboard. That’s how I found myself back at 182 Maple Glen Drive.
A simple bungalow stood here once—faded green siding, shallow eaves, a crooked aluminum awning over the door. It caught fire one July night. Faulty wiring, they said. The next morning, the shell was still smoldering when I walked by. Yellow tape rustled in the breeze. The scent of charred lumber tangled with lilac. It stuck in my throat.
Since then, it’s been a void. A weedy, sunken plot, fenced in by chain-link, slowly being reabsorbed by the street—or rejected by it. I’m not sure which.
Now, it’s coming back. A new infill proposal. Eight units. Four stories. Not my project—I’ve just been asked to review it for the City of Greybridge. But I’m here on site with the drawings under my arm, walking the block again like I always do, because nothing beats standing in the space where the story wants to happen.
It’s late afternoon. Spring in that muddy, stubborn stage before anything really blooms. The air smells like thaw and sidewalk dust. I lean against the fence and look both ways.
To my left, Mrs. Fadel’s house—red brick, built in the ‘50s. She’s still there, bless her, though her son does the shoveling now. Her lilac bush droops into the lot. When it flowers, it perfumes the entire block. That’s coming soon.
Across the street is a grey clapboard house with a yellow door that always glows, even on overcast days. Young family. She’s a nurse, he’s a musician. Their kids used to sell lemonade under a beach umbrella propped up by hockey sticks.
These things matter.
I flip open the folder. Renderings, elevations, site plan. It’s clean. Four stories, dark cladding, big windows. Compliant setbacks. Flat roof. It obeys the guidelines, technically. But it doesn’t listen.
The front entry is tucked behind a narrow walkway. There’s no porch. No stoop. Just a modest cutout framed by some highly theoretical landscaping. One of those entryways you move through fast, keys in hand, eyes down. Not a place you wave from.
The front yard is mostly paved—stepping stones, interlock, boxed shrubs. No softness. No space for weeds to misbehave, or snowmen, or stray soccer balls. I don’t see where the neighbourhood slips in.
I sigh and keep flipping. Rear yard amenity space: minimal. Tree retention plan: hopeful. No sun study. They’ve proposed Juliet balconies at the front and projecting ones at the back. Which feels . . . backwards.
I try to picture it as built. Not just as a diagram, but as something lived in. And for a moment, I think I’ve got it. Then my pen drops into a crack in the sidewalk. I bend down, mutter something under my breath. A blue jay on the power line stares like it doubts the choice of setback.
I believe in density. I fight for it. But some days, I just want the street to stay exactly as it is.
I head to the rear lane. Gravel, old tire ruts, a compost bin split open like a peeled fruit. Behind 186, a tall maple casts an uneven shadow. I think about the child next door, the one with the trampoline. Where will the shadow fall in winter? Will the new wall block their morning sun? I imagine them blinking at breakfast, wondering why the light has changed.
Back out front, I linger near the curb. A man jogs past in silence. Somewhere, a screen door bangs.
Infill is complicated. Every lot is a negotiation between what was, what is, and what might be. I’ve worked on tighter sites than this. I’ve argued for intensification in public meetings, at design panels, over coffee-stained drawings and half-charged laptops—always trying to make room for more without erasing what’s already there.
But buildings aren’t just volumes. They’re agreements. They’re part of a collective sentence we’re writing about how we live together.
And this proposal—at least as drawn—feels like a handshake from a man already looking over your shoulder.
I circle the front setback. It pushes closer to the street than either neighbour. Not a lot, but enough to break the rhythm. Enough to interrupt the street’s inhale.
I scribble: Respect dominant front yard pattern. A slight shift can feel like a full dislocation.
Another note: Consider shared porches or stoops. Architecture as invitation, not boundary.
The file closes with a soft thwap. I stand there a while longer, letting the site speak. A robin digs at the edge of the lot. The wind shifts.
I think about something I once told a room full of architecture students: “Design is the story we leave behind, told in materials, shadows, and setbacks.”
Some nodded. Some stared blankly. One asked if it would be on the exam.
But I stand by it.
The best streets tell stories. You can read them in the slope of a roof, the arch of a window, the distance between a stoop and a sidewalk. You can hear them in the way footsteps echo between façades, or in the hush that settles after dinner on a Thursday night.
I write one last note: Porches aren’t nostalgic. They’re connective tissue. Bring them back.
Will this feedback shift the design? Maybe. Maybe not. But it’s worth trying.
Because if buildings are sentences, streets are the chapters. And the best neighbourhoods—the ones people remember, and raise families in, and return to after years away—are the ones where every new addition feels like it belongs in the story.
