Re: City vs Country
From: Paul Barton-Davis (pbdOp.Net)
Date: Thu, 11 Sep 1997 20:54:17 -0500
I would like to whole-heartedly echo Donna's excellent comments on
Rob's enthusiasm for country living. However, she also wrote:

>And I agree we need to steward the land. I feel like I'm doing my part by not
>encouraging the building of cohousing communities on new, undeveloped land.
>We need to do more in-fill projects, or tear down fences. Let farmers live
>on ag-land!

Sometimes, I think the countryside could be improved by increasing our
density of usage, by which I mean both a move to more labor-intensive,
ultra-dense agriculture such as that advocated by John Jeavons, and
also increasing the number of "farmers" and their families who live on
farms.

Its not quite cohousing but: lets say, 3 families, deriving some
income from farming *and* using the same rough square footage for
housing as is *already* taken up by farmer's living quarters. This
seems to me to be a step in the right direction: reducing land usage
per capita, decreasing rural isolation, increasing shared resources,
making sustainable agriculture (to the extent that any agriculture is
sustainable ...) more feasible.

I'm also thrilled by urban in-fill projects, but there are thousands
or millions of acres of rural (not wild) land in the USA that are
being increasingly mishandled because people don't live there
anymore. If cohousing can act as an inspiration for people to move
onto existing farmland *and* be happy there, then perhaps the disaster
that agri-business has been for rural land can be partially reversed.

Meanwhile, back in West Philadelphia ...

--p

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