Mainstream Appeal | <– Date –> <– Thread –> |
From: Mac Thomson (machappyvalley.com) | |
Date: Sat, 14 Oct 1995 12:17:26 -0500 |
The recent discussion about the"base model" of cohousing touches on an issue that was addressed at the conference, but not satisfactorily resolved in my mind. It seemed that at the 94 conference there was much more discussion about how to get the "extras" in your cohousing community: affordability, sustainability, and diversity of every kind. One of the themes of this year's conference seemed to be that just creating a "base model" cohousing community was a ton of work and if a group set out to create the "base model" plus all the "extras", the project would likely be too big and either not get done or drive away people that would like to live in cohousing, but who weren't willing to spend 4000 hours to make it happen. There seemed to be general agreement that there are lots more people that would like to live in cohousing than there are people that would like to live in cohousing AND are willing to go through all the work to make it happen. This makes sense to me. So what we need to be working on (and what I think this year's conference focused on to some degree) is how to make creating cohousing easier. If we can do that, we will greatly broaden our market. That is, we may be able to begin to appeal to the mainstream. This strategy looks good, but my question is, based on the short history of cohousing in America, has it proved to be true? Where a core group has gone to all the work to create a cohousing neighborhood, have available units been snapped up? It seems that if there's a big market out there yearning for community, but not wanting to become real estate developers, existing cohousing units should be easy to sell. Is this happening? I've seen numerous ads for units at Winslow and Santa Fe, and it seems that Highline Crossing has had trouble selling their units even though the bulk of the work has been done. Now that we have a bit of history to lood at, I think that we need to examine this assumption that if cohousing is easy to buy into, we'll have lots of people wanting to do it - maybe even mainstream appeal. I realize that creating a better way for the mainstream to live is not the only goal of creating cohousing, but I do feel that it's a significant one. I'm also, of course, working to create cohousing for the selfish reason of wanting a better place for me, my family, and my friends to live. Mac Thomson San Juan Cohousing Mac [at] HappyValley.com Durango, Colorado "I used to be an agnostic, but now I'm not so sure." --Sent from HappyValley FirstClass BBS 904.246.9255
-
Mainstream Appeal Mac Thomson, October 14 1995
- Re: Mainstream Appeal TXSage, October 17 1995
- Re: Mainstream Appeal Fred H Olson WB0YQM, October 18 1995
Results generated by Tiger Technologies Web hosting using MHonArc.