Cohousing-L Mailing List: Let's find intrinsic fun in developing CoHo

[Joani Blank (jeblank]

When we invite someone to join a core group, we are usually inviting them to
invest a lot of time, energy and money in building a home in a community
that will fill their need for community and provide many other improvements
to their quality of life, but they don't get to have it for several--perhaps
many--years. An analogy that occurred to me at the conference: Let us say
that you and I and one other person all want to build a car for our private
and mutual enjoyment. 
First we spend a lot of time discussing deciding on exactly what kind of car
we want, and where it will be garaged once it is built. Then we scatter to
buy  materials. With the help of a professional car-builder, we go out and
buy all the little and big pieces. We assemble them under the watchful eye
of another professional. Just as we are getting going, someone loses the
plans, then we have to consense about what to do next, so everything is
delayed. Turns out no one wants to finance this questionable project so we
run out of money. And we're not sure it will ever be legal to drive this odd
machine on public road. When it is finally built, we get to work some more
on our process about who gets to use it when. YIKES!

You get my drift, I think. Up until now we have only marketed the final
product, living in bliss in cohousing once it is built. Although we talk
about how valuable (community-building) the getting-it-built process is, in
the end, many cohousers end up, I fear, treating the development and
building of their communities as "the price you have to pay to live here."
Perod. We simply have to find a way (IMHO) to market cohousing that values
the building process itself, making it fun--or at least mind-expanding or
engaging--so that people will be attracted to being part of a community
during the development and building EVEN IF by some chance, they were to end
up not living there. Not that I know how to "position" cohousing that
way--just that I believe if we can start thinking this way, some good ideas
will appearl.

Joani Blank