Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: pushing the envelope

[Scott Cowley (scowley]

Thanks to John Poteet of  Chico for sharing his insights!
He is so right about the city planners.  We're lucky we have one as a member!
As a community, we will probably be able to help with experimentation on some 
of the new
technologies in a practical way.  One of which we are paying extra to try is 
"R-Control panels", a 
"stress-skin" construction method which gets away from stud framing.

Philip Proefrock also begins an awfully important thread from my point of view. 
 Here in our little 
valley we have just about run out of land thanks to the ravenous appetites of 
the 30 or so suburb
developers.  Therefore, the question turns to retrofit.

  An idea is to buy existing suburban housing, put a pedestrian path in the 
backyards, plow up the
roads in the front yards, and physically _connect_ a few of the houses 
together, periodically, in 
order to come up with  local, smaller-scale systems for say...schools, 
or...homes, 
or...commonhouses!  Minibuses would connect the smaller schools (as well as 
neighbors) to regional
facilities such as gyms, labs, libraries, other programs, etc., thus 
discouraging  the problem of
too big a human scale (the public school-as-factory).

        This is what I call leftist thinking.  Thanks.

Zippity Doo Dah...