Memphis, Tennessee
Infill that fits.
Jones Urban Development builds missing middle housing in Memphis: cottage courts, fourplexes, live-work buildings, and backyard cottages that make neighborhoods walkable, affordable, and alive.
The mismatch
Our homes got bigger. Our households got smaller.
Since 1950 the typical new American house has more than doubled in size while the typical household has shrunk. Most of what gets built today is sized for a family that is no longer the norm, on a lot pattern that makes walking anywhere impractical.
Source: U.S. Census Bureau. Figures rounded.
Our mission is to provide smaller homes within walkable neighborhoods that are functional, flexible, and lovable: homes that foster connection to the larger community and promote more vibrant, active lives.
Proof, not promises
Built on real blocks, under real codes.
Malone Park Commons
35 homes on one Uptown city block: cottages, fourplexes, and live-work buildings around shared green space. The learning lab behind Memphis's code reform.
Read the case study →Uptown Cottages
A completed collection of small, well-built cottage homes on infill lots in Uptown Memphis.
See the project →More than a builder
We build. We prove. We reform.
We build
House-scale buildings with several homes each: accessory dwellings, cottage courts, duplexes through fourplexes, live-work, and small mixed-use.
What we build →We prove
Completed projects, occupied and managed, financed and permitted the same way any small developer in Memphis would have to do it.
Our projects →We reform
Code, zoning, and utility rules decide what can be built. Working with city planners, code officials, and fellow builders, we brought lessons from Malone Park Commons to Memphis's 2021 Large Home Amendment, Tennessee's House Bill 2787, and the 2025 Appendix M. There is more to do.
Our policy work →Memphis's code reform work, and the part Malone Park Commons played in it, has been written up by the Center for Building in North America, the National League of Cities, the American Planning Association, UCLA Housing Voice, and Strong Towns. Read the research
Let's build the next block together.
Cities, foundations, lenders, and fellow developers: if you want gentle density that actually gets built, we would like to talk.