Re: Cohousing-L digest, Vol 1 #563 - 7 msgs | <– Date –> <– Thread –> |
From: cscheuer (cscheuerumich.edu) | |
Date: Wed, 17 Jul 2002 11:19:25 -0600 (MDT) |
> If people do not have the time or the > commitment to the process, consensus won't work and majority voting is > probably the only other option. Consensus requires a group of people who > share goals and have a personal commitment to each other. This is > fundamental to me as a part of cohousing. The implication here is that consensus=sharing goals and having a personal commitment to each other=cohousing thus cohousing=consensus. It is my understanding and hope that cohousing is not a fixed form. Just as diversity of membership is desirable in a cohousing community, I believe that diversity of cohousing form is desirable. Cohousing is still an experiment and playing with formats is probably critical to the evolution of cohousing. I believe that the only fundamental feature of cohousing is a desire on the part of members for greater community. Community has existed for as long as living beings have, generally without any formal decision making process guiding it. Obviously not all of those have been positive, but many have. So its not the process that makes the community, but the people. Any format can work if it works for the people involved. I currently live in university family housing, physically very similar to a cohousing community (minus the common house) but without any intentional social activities, or self-management. Its amazing how much of the cohousing experience we share - the increased feelings of safety, shared childcare, equipment and knowledge sharing, the juggle of increased social interactions with a certain loss of privacy. I met a woman yesterday who moved in from a nearby condo complex and she was visibly shocked when I introduced myself, and her friend, said "see your neighbors talk to you here." While there is much here that is missing from a cohousing community, it still achieves many of the same effects (for those people who desire such impacts). Many people here would never consider something so "radical" as cohousing, but they like all the benefits and recognize the difference in community feeling from other contemporary settings. I feel that we do have a community, with a strong attachment to it. Living here has influenced my awareness of our mutual interdependance. We compromise and negotiate over issues, not on the scale of a cohousing community, because we are all meager tenants of the university, but smaller individual issues. But we have no formal process for anything, we all just live here. No commitments to each other, no collective shared values. As I said this is not cohousing, but it does make me think about what it does take to make a community and the degrees or flavors of cohousing that are possible. Regards, Chris Scheuer Master of Science in Architecture Research Assistant Center for Sustainable Systems School of Natural Resources and Environment University of Michigan www.css.snre [at] umich.edu _______________________________________________ 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.