need for PR
From: Collaborative Housing Society (cohosocweb.apc.org)
Date: Thu, 10 Aug 1995 08:47:52 -0500
I wanted to relate a story about the effects of PR, as experienced by one
group around here.

They want to locate to the North of Toronto, and so went to speak to the
Planning Departments of the three "city" municipalities that make up the
regional government up there.

Two of their visits went quite well, with the planners eventually dragging
out the area maps and offering suggestions (and phone numbers) of land
owners where this interesting project might locate.

The third office was quite a bit frostier, seeing themselves as preservers
of a certain way of life - nuclear (in all senses of the word) families who
drive cars, a lot - that cohousing would be incompatible with, and suggested
that the group look elsewhere.

Well, two out of three isn't bad, so the group went off and followed up on
the leads for sites, only to discover that, for many reasons, the best sites
they found, plus the best geography re: transit, etc, were in the
jurisdiction of the chilly third planning dept.

In the meantime, I had started writing a column in the Professional Planning
Journal about collaborative housing, cohousing for short, and what it can
teach us about what people really want, but only saying much the same as the
group did during their various visits (I wish I'd had Rob Sandelin's 145
word description - or better yet, one of his clones).

Guess what?  When the group got up the nerve to call up those icy planners
to run the idea by them again, they were interrupted by the comment:  "well,
you guys should take a look at this thing called cohousing.  Now that's
something we'd like to see up here".

So, does the word cohousing help or hurt?  Depends on who's using it!

Russell Mawby
Collaborative Housing Society - Toronto
cohosoc [at] web.apc.org



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