Economy, Sharing, and Community Size [was Welcome to Wendy Wiesner, PFAC Executive Director
From: Sharon Villines (sharonsharonvillines.com)
Date: Sun, 6 Sep 2015 07:10:31 -0700 (PDT)
(Sending again with the better subject line. Sorry.)

On Sep 6, 2015, at 10:02 AM, Sharon Villines <sharon [at] sharonvillines.com> 
wrote:

> On Sep 5, 2015, at 6:56 PM, R Philip Dowds <rpdowds [at] comcast.net> wrote:
> 
> I would assert that the 20- to 40-unit coho is ideal for advanced sharing:  
> Large enough for meaningful economies of scale and diversity in time demands, 
> but small enough to build the trust and cooperation necessary for a sharing 
> system to work.  So if our goal is to make cohousing affordable, I’d advocate 
> that we learn more about how to play the sharing card.

And this will be more economical if it is built in from the beginning. How does 
design facilitate sharing and what does sharing allow us to delete/reduce in 
the initial design?

I think 40 is on the big side. At Takoma Village we have 43 units and the 
contact sheet hot off the press this morning shows 90+ residents. The “+” is 
because there are lots of ways to count residents — does it count the 5 people 
moving into the unit that had 4 people who are away for a year? Babies?  But 
the point is that it is very hard to govern a system of sharing with that many 
people. It’s too many to educate and keep track of on an informal basis. And I 
think most of us would like to live informally. Systems yes, but they need to 
maintain themselves without much oversight. That gets burdensome and people 
start buying their own stuff because it is less work and more dependable.

40-50 people can form a network of information that emerges out of daily life 
and habits. People see each other coming and going so they can figure out who 
forgot to return the set of drill bits. Or who might have all the pie plates 
from the kitchen. Or know enough about it to help someone else use the wet-vac. 
Or help save the soup that suddenly went too salty to serve tonight.

The information network needs to be maintained in order to share.

Sharon
----
Sharon Villines, Washington DC

"I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the world and a desire 
to enjoy the world. This makes it hard to plan the day.”
― E.B. White

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