Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re:Cohousing changing over time

[Fred H Olson WB0YQM (fholson]

On Wed, 25 May 94 17:43 CDT, 
Rob Sandelin  <robsan [at] microsoft.com> wrote:

<much deleted>
>
>I see in my own cohousing group a real identity crisis at times. Are we 
>"a community" or are we a bunch of neighbors who work cooperatively 
>together?  If we are a community, then we should be working on some 
>sort of goals for maximizing and deepening our relationships.  If we 
>are not, then the only level of relationship we need to have is what is 
>required to work together and solve our conflicts.
>
This strikes me as a false dicotomy.  Maybe you have a more strict
definition of "community" or maybe it's the specific words you chose
which seem to glorify "community" and minimize "cooperation".  My
expectations are for some reasonable arrangement that would seem
to fall in between the to stark extremes you portray. 

I think that there are numerous helpful but not necessarily sufficient
factors that make the complex phenomenon of "community" happen.

Just the architecture of cohousing helps but doesn't assure the
development a "community".

A group of people who share cooperative values but whose lives and
homes are configured so they dont interact often will likely have
minimal community.

The expectation that a neighborhood will have a cooperative community
helps make it happen and also attracts people who share cooperative values.

The experience of developing cohousing goes a long way to establishing
the community but those who come along later can certainly be integrated
into a a community that has it's own positive momentum.

The more of these a neighborhood has the better its community is likely 
to be but that doesn't mean the lack of some makes the remaining ones
undesireable.  Tho we may wish to reserve the term cohousing for some
minimal combination of features; spending too much time debating
linguistics can also be a waste.

>more deleted<
>Rob Sandelin
>Sharingwood

Fred
--
Fred H. Olson     fholson [at] uci.com     Minneapolis, MN   55411        
voice: (612) 588-9532    Amateur radio call: WB0YQM   Sysop of 
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