Cohousing-L Mailing List: Cohousing on PBS Future Quest program

[Bob Morrison (morrison]

  I saw the program last week. I didn't know in advance if the program had any
material on cohousing, but I thought any program on "the future of housing"
would be incomplete if it didn't.
  This program is very fast-paced and I had trouble keeping up. Architect
Richard(?) Duany, whose designs are the opposite of the "all made of ticky-
tack and all look the same" designs that ruled for 30 years in the U.S., was
prominently featured. They covered some of the "houses of the future" that had
been conceived and, sometimes, built over the last 70 years. Some of the 
old images of the future were hilariously funny because they were so off-the-
wall. They ran through several new concepts of housing and community design
and finally got to cohousing, which they spent five minutes on. Nobody can do
justice to cohousing in five minutes. They showed some cute footage of kids 
that could have just as easily been filmed at a day-care center or in con-
ventional housing. The best material on cohousing, I thought, was that they
interviewed several people at Winslow who talked about why they live in co-
housing, how they feel about it, etc.
  Unfortunately, there was nothing at the end of the program about who to call
or write for more information, so if anyone hears about cohousing for the first
time from this program and wants to pursue it, they may have a hard time find-
ing out who to call.

Bob