Re: "Gawkers" at cohousing communities | <– Date –> <– Thread –> |
From: Bob Morrison (morrisontook.enet.dec.com) | |
Date: Tue, 3 Jan 95 19:18 CST |
Jim Snyder-Grant's recent posting on publicity brought to mind a possible problem from getting too much publicity, which is the amount of time and energy people would have to spend fielding inquiries from the press. This is something I hadn't thought of before, but I now realize this could chew up huge amounts of time and time is a major issue in cohousing, especially during the design and move-in phases. Rob Sandelin's posting raised another issue, which is that the more well- known a coho community is to the public, the more problem there is with gawkers. (I think this is a good word to describe these people.) I would like to raise two arguments from the gawkers' side: 1. When visiting a cohousing community, it is hard to tell how far you can go in looking around before being considered an intruder. Does Sharingwood have signs at the entrance saying "No trespassing" or the like? If not, how are visitors supposed to know that they must be invited before they can walk around? 2. It's often hard to know who to contact in advance when visiting a coho community, because of their informal organizational structure. If I were planning to visit a coho community, I would go to the trouble of finding out who to contact, and make a serious effort to contact that person(s) in advance and get invited to visit, or at least get clearance to walk the grounds on my own if I could not arrange a formal visit at a time that was doable for me. But what if I were sent, on a week's notice, on a business trip to a distant city and wanted to visit a coho community while there? If I could not find and contact the right people in time, I would be tempted to walk the grounds uninvited. Are you (Rob) saying that any visitor who is not known to most of the residents of a cohousing community should be escorted by a resident(s) at all times when visiting the site? If so, this raises another issue, which is that escorting guests could use up a lot of people's time. >In the handout materials for the Puget Sound Cohousing Network I list >etiquette for visiting. Maybe this should be spread wider via the >journal. Were these rules of etiquette published in the Fall 1994 Cohousing journal? I'm just now getting around to reading it. (I usually read it much more promptly than this.) Yes, I do think these rules should be spread wider, in- cluding this "list".
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Re: "Gawkers" at cohousing communities Bob Morrison, January 3 1995
- Re: "Gawkers" at cohousing communities Stuart Staniford-Chen, January 3 1995
- Re: "Gawkers" at cohousing communities Rob Sandelin, January 4 1995
- Re: "Gawkers" at cohousing communities David Hungerford, January 5 1995
- Re: "Gawkers" at cohousing communities SPINTUS, January 5 1995
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