Cohousing-L Mailing List: Design Criteria for Cohousing

[Harry Pasternak (Harry_Pasternak]

There was a recent posting asking for info on the space between homes etc etc.

It appears that the majority of cohousing neighborhoods being built in North
America are utilizing the design elements that are found in cohousing in
Europe - which is based on the research done on cohousing in European as well
as research done in the western world on neighborhood design. The majority of
cohousing neighborhoods in the USA (as well as in Europe and Canada), have:

- Homes that are "clustered" with common walls between homes.
- Homes that line an 8 foot wide pedestrian path-cars are parked away from
the homes.
- A front lawn/front garden in varing depths-none greater than 12 foot in
depth.
- Private back yards.
- Yes,  a covered front porch big enough to sit four adults and a baby
carriage. 
- etc. etc.

So it seems that the majority of cohousing participants involved in the
design and planning are doing a search of the literature. The strange thing
about all this- is one could get the notion from reading some comments posted
here over the past six months or so, that would indicate that the reverse to
the above were true.

Since folks from Europe will be attending the up-coming conference- I know
they will be bringing both cohousing and neighborhood research information to
reinforce the good design notions that appear in the cohousing neighborhoods
in Canada and the USA.

Harry Pasternak
Thousand Islands Institute

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