Cohousing-L Mailing List: Neighbours

[Collaborative Housing Society (cohosoc]

To continue Rob (Sandelin - thanks Rob for being direct!) call for working
*with* neighbours rather than trying to select them, I wanted to relate a
recent discussion I had with a group of people who are actively pursuing a
cohousing development.

They mentioned all the reasons why coho appealed - community, contact,
sharing, etc.  The interesting point is that they are talking about doing
this in a neighbourhood that is already a pretty good place to live, from
any point of view - close-by amenities, fairly dense, well-cared for homes,
an identifiable locale, with strong community spirit.

A newcomer to the discussion had the naivity to ask why they were bothering
with coho?  Didn't they already have it?  And if they wanted to be such good
neighbours, why weren't the neighbours involved in the discussion?

Good questions, met with blank stares and a long silence.

I suspect they became entranced with the lovely photos in the coho book, and
were more into the "bondage scene" (refering to a much earlier remark about
all this on this list) of developing a new community than tackling the less
glamourous job of dealing with the community they already lived in.

I also wonder why N-Street didn't make it into The CoHousing Book - maybe
the next edition?

Russell Mawby
Toronto
cohosoc [at] web.apc.org