Cohousing-L Mailing List: House location selection

[Nancy Wight (wight]

Okay all of you veterans of the process... how did you go about
deciding who lives where on the site?

We already went through one somewhat painful process with
our old site plan.  But now we have to do it again with our
new site plan, and would like to do things differently.  Last
time we had everyone fill out a survey about what things were
important to them regarding their location on the site.  We
hired an outside person to then try and put people where they
would get at least some of what they wanted.  It was all 
confidential to the rest of the group - only the "matchmaker"
knew all of the details.  I think this was a mistake because
when the going got tough, people wanted to know about others'
preferences so they could maybe negotiate with them.

This time we are considering scheduling a long meeting where
*every* household is represented and we work it out together, with
the help of an outside facilitator.  

Any ideas would be greatly appreciated!

- Nancy

-- 
New View Neighborhood Development, Acton, MA