IT ISN'T COHOUSING IF IT AIN'T GOT THAT CO. | <– Date –> <– Thread –> |
From: The CoHousing Company (cohocohousingco.com) | |
Date: Tue, 12 Jun 2001 10:23:08 -0600 (MDT) |
Howdy everyone, Katie and I have been asked several times lately what we think about housing projects that has been designed without the future residents but is being called cohousing by the project¹s promoters. Designing a cohousing community with the future residents is basic to the concept and the definition of cohousing. It is in the design process where we will continue to evolve development towards housing that is more reflective of the real values of our society. Otherwise we will continue to build what we think people want and that will be entirely based on looking in the rear view mirror rather than looking forward and evolving towards a more sustainable society. Secondly, the group is best at breaking the envelope; we are not going to break it for them. They are also best at getting new concepts approved. Distance to parking, size of houses, etc., where someone somewhere else (Fire Department, banks, appraisers, etc.) will have problems with unless there are future residents to push for them. My experience after 30 projects is that the least group involvement the more brand X. The more involvement, the more we evolve towards less energy use, more sustainability, and more towards the most sustainable characteristic of all community. As you know, there are many ways to do housing. Everything from cohousing to warehousing (prisons, bad senior housing, etc.) and many forms in between. While in Denmark there are still only about 250 cohousing developments built to date, the legacy of cohousing is much larger. Many thousands of housing developments have been inspired by cohousing and have been created in a way that makes them much better than average single family or multi-family housing. They have better club houses, better social areas, better kid facilities outside, better landscaping, and more. But those are not called cohousing. I have heard people refer to them as the cousins of cohousing and I think that is a good term. As you know, housing designed without the future residents is not cohousing. Quite unfortunately, however, the marketeers of America will call anything anything in order to sell it. Like the industrial park without the park and the business plaza without a plaza. It is not cohousing without the co. We just got back from Kauia where a marketeer called 7 boxes (that they sell things from like Burger King, Office Max, etc.) completely surrounded by asphalt "Kauia village". What an insult to the indigenous folk. I know they do not want to call it "strip commercial", its real description, but at least they could call it a "shopping place" or something other than what folks used to inhabit before the gringos and their marketeers arrived. Americans are shameless when it comes to exploiting the language and the good reputations or the nice sound of something in order to move a product. Product is what developers call typical houses and real estate. It is fairer for the consumers to not cal l developer-driven product cohousing. After 250 cohousing projects were built in Denmark, finally a developer came along who wanted to do a speculative cohousing project. He had successfully co-developed other cohousing communities. He employed a very experienced cohousing architect. I visited it six months after full move in. After six months, the common house had still not been unlocked. The group could not agree on anything. How could they, they had no history, no culture of making decisions together. The fact is that half of the buyers were enthusiastic about cohousing and cooperating with their neighbors and were eager to make it work. However, they themselves had not grown as a community, had not formed as a community by making decisions together and were no where near a community when they moved in. They were foisted together by real estate. Real estate does not make a community. The residents move in as a community in cohousing. They have a culture of making decisions. sometimes very tough decisions, together. Some flap later such as "should all the kids in the community be invited to a child¹s birthday party" won¹t send everyone home refusing to talk to each other. They have a culture of being together, setting up baby sitting, coughing up money, disagreeing and getting over it, and laughing together. The habits are in place. The primary responsibility of the real estate is to maintain the community, maintain convivial opportunities, sustain relationships, but it cannot catalyze relationships. In fact, if you put people in your face before the relationship has been developed, then in-your-face real estate has the opposite effect it causes you to shrink away from relationships. Have you ever had that uncomfortable experience when the person you did not know in the apartment across the hall walked out of their apartment at the same time you did? Hi, ya hi! The other half of the buyers like the location, like some of the groovy energy saving features, like the school district, like the house and oh ya, and that cohousing thing, whatever. There is no litmus test for cohousing. As anyone who has lived in a shared house knows, people will say anything. The would-be cohousers were disappointed and frustrated because they could not get anything going and the others were frustrated by the busy bodies running around telling everyone else "if you¹d just cooperate". So the project was neither fish nor fowl and had considerable difficulty selling. Don¹t get me wrong, housing designed as more intimate environments, smaller houses, more sustainable development, more child-friendly environments, and just general consideration for designing housing as if people mattered is a good thing. And of the literally thousands of projects in Denmark that have used cohousing as a model for design, most of them work socially much better than typical housing. But they don¹t call it cohousing and even the best don¹t have people spending 12-15 quality hours a week with neighbors on average or 50-100 contacts a week with neighbors like Katie and I do in our cohousing community. Everything from waving to them through the kitchen window on my way home or to work, to "hey, would you like a beer", to an extended conversation over dinner, to running the Bay to Breakers together on a bright sunny Sunday morning. The other projects are better than average but they are not cohousing. A third of the projects we are designing these days, we were hired to do because the client wanted more community and even participation, which they have a considerable amount of but it is not cohousing. Cohousing is unique. If the future residents were not party to the design process and to the budget and all the details that build a community, a village not brick by brick, but decision by decision and lead to vital common activities such as common dinner if not, we humbly request as the folks who coined the word cohousing or just as an appeal to old-fashioned honesty, that you do not call it cohousing. To do so will only frustrate future buyers, probably you, and definitely any attempt to make and keep cohousing unique in the market place. Because cohousing is not just about housing; it is about bringing democracy and participation to the creation of community and neighborhoods toward a more sustainable future. Charles Durrett Katie McCamant McCamant & Durrett Architects aka The CoHousing Company _______________________________________________ Cohousing-L mailing list Cohousing-L [at] cohousing.org Unsubscribe and other info: http://www.communityforum.net/mailman/listinfo/cohousing-l
- (no other messages in thread)
Results generated by Tiger Technologies Web hosting using MHonArc.