Cohousing-L Mailing List: Acid test for community

[Rob Sandelin (floriferous]

Sheila Braun thought from a post that my acid test for community is  a
willingness to lend a car. No, it is just one sort of measure of how well
you know your neighbors. In pretty much every community I have visited,
borrowing things from one another is a normal part of community life. The
borrowing a cup of sugar is  a defining sign to me. When people are
strangers, you go to the store rather than walk across the hall to borrow a
cup of sugar. This comfort level with interaction is a key base for
understanding your level of community. If you know your neighbors, you have
a base comfort level in borrowing small things from them.

A car, is a much bigger thing to borrow, and is a bigger sign of comfort and
knowledge. Yes, there are people in my own community, some of whom I have
known for 12 years, who I would not comfortably loan my car to. But there
are many others who can have my keys whenever they need them. (assuming I
don't need it). In general, I have a base comfort system that my need for a
car is supported. I feel that if I ever should need a car or a ride, I can
get that fairly easily. And I have several examples over the years of living
here, both giving and receiving, that supports this comfort level. My
sister, who has lived in the same neighborhood in Seattle for 25 years,
does not  have this. When she needed a ride last week, she called a cab.

In the condo with a social design I was  using for an example, there were
dozens of things which told me about the level of relationship of the
residents. Another example was that there were picnic tables in the nice
grassy community commons that most the units looked over. They are rarely
ever used? Why? Because they were Too public. The people who lived in this
condo wanted their privacy. They were apparently uncomfortable being out in
the social space. In many places in America, neighborhood social isolation
has become an astonishing norm in many suburban places. As cohousers, we are
some kind of weirdos. We CHOOSE to interact with our neighbors, in fact, we
want it so much, some of us spend incredible amounts of energy and time to
design and build social interaction based neighborhoods from the ground up.
News teams come and do stories on how we are bucking the trends. It's
newsworthy that neighborhood social interaction is desired and accomplished
by some people. But the norm is isolation.

There have been numerous stories over the years on this list, at cohousing
gatherings, etc to illustrate how easy cohousers find asking their neighbors
for various levels of support. Sometimes of course the answer to asking is
No, but asking is typically not really a huge barrier, especially at the cup
of sugar level. I would say that the comfort level you have in asking your
neighbors for support you need is a an ingredient that defines the social
fabric of your community. And of course, the giving of support is another.
What you do for each other says a lot about the level of what I would call
"community". Community meals are a prime example of this. Yes, there is a
self-serving part to community meals. But it is also a large community
service.

So the ability to borrow a car is just one way to understand a level of
community. And of course, the place I was describing was NOT a community by
intention. It was just a nicely designed condo and it was a prime example,
in my learning, of how little architecture determines community level. I
know there are people who have this strong belief system that architecture
is a key element of community. Many of them are architects and I have argued
with  them for years. From my experiences, just putting people together does
not make them a "community". They have to want to be a community, want to
have relationships enough to put some energy into it. Yes, you can create a
nice social design, but if the people who live there don't want to be
social, then your design will not create the interaction, other than at a
very superficial level. I would dare to opine that cohousing has aspirations
to be much more than superficially social. The social design elements built
into cohousing projects work because we want to be social in the first
place, and so creating designs to enhance social opportunity make it easier
to do what we already strongly desire.


Rob Sandelin
Sharingwood


-----Original Message-----
From: cohousing-l-admin [at] cohousing.org
[mailto:cohousing-l-admin [at] cohousing.org]On Behalf Of sbraun
Sent: Saturday, November 23, 2002 5:16 AM
To: cohousing-l [at] cohousing.org
Subject: RE: [C-L]_Do cohousers care about "bricks and sticks"?


Hi Rob.

Thanks for your interesting and enjoyable posts to this list. I really
enjoy reading them.

However, here we disagree, I think. It sounds like your acid test for
community is a willingness to share cars. My own would be laughter. But
a red flag goes up for me when an outsider makes a judgment about
another community, or even makes a general judgment about what community
should be. There is a hint of superiority about that.

I wonder if there aren't people out there for whom what you call "just a
condo" is really and truly deeply satisfying and life-enriching, and for
whom the kind of community you find fulfilling would seem like a prison.
There are many paths to happiness and fulfillment. We cohousers don't
have a corner on the right way to live.

Sheila

Project Coordinator
Champlain Valley Cohousing
www.champlainvalleycohousing.org
(802) 425-5030 phone
(802) 425-5033 fax
(802) 238-2667 cell


> -----Original Message-----
> From: cohousing-l-admin [at] cohousing.org [mailto:cohousing-l-
> admin [at] cohousing.org] On Behalf Of Rob Sandelin
> Sent: Friday, November 22, 2002 6:49 PM
> To: cohousing-l [at] cohousing.org
> Subject: RE: [C-L]_Do cohousers care about "bricks and sticks"?
>
> I can show you a condo in Bellevue WA that has a brilliant cohousing
> design,
> pedestrian core, play area, nice community center that is central and
easy
> to look into from almost every unit. It even has a nice kitchen,
although
> not industrial grade.  It has very little community. The neighbors are
> pretty much still strangers, some after 5 years. It is nothing like a
> cohousing community in terms of relationships. I asked my guide there
if
> she
> felt comfortable asking to borrow a car. She looked at me like I was
from
> Mars. There is nothing there but the typical condo.
>
>  So sorry, I do not believe in bricks and sticks having much to do
with
> community. Its not the architecture, its the people and their desires
and
> intentions that make cohousing what it is, a community by intention.
> There
> are hundreds of Intentional communities that are not cohousing,that
have
> good relationships and totally isolating architecture. If architecture
> really was the key why do those places work? Because it is the
intentions
> of
> the people do have those relationships. Take away that intention for
> relationship from cohousing, and all you have left is a condo. In
fact, at
> least one cohousing group, common ground in Aspen, lost its intention
and
> became just another condo. There are a couple other cohousing groups
which
> have large percentage of the people who live there not involved,
> apparently
> uninterested in community. They just want a  safe, cheap place to
live. It
> will interesting to see if those cohousing groups also don't just end
up
> as
> condos.
>
> Rob Sandelin
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: cohousing-l-admin [at] cohousing.org
> [mailto:cohousing-l-admin [at] cohousing.org]On Behalf Of Sharon Villines
> Sent: Friday, November 22, 2002 8:36 AM
> To: cohousing-l [at] cohousing.org
> Subject: Re: [C-L]_Do cohousers care about "bricks and sticks"?
>
>
> On 11/20/02 2:12 PM, "Howard Landman" <howard [at] polyamory.org> wrote:
>
> > I believe that the design of the community can have an immense
> > impact on the day-to-day functioning of it.  Even something as
simple as
> > having the common house in the middle versus on one end can make a
huge
> > difference.
>
> The bricks and sticks are important as long as they are related to a
> deeper
> value, building economically, socially, and ecologically sustainable
> communities. Intelligent investment in our personal spaces is a very
> fundamental way of putting our money (time and thought) where our
mouth
> is.
> Along with our hearts and feet.
>
> The bricks and sticks are one of the unique and defining
characteristics
> of
> cohousing.
>
> Sharon
> --
> Sharon Villines
> Takoma Village Cohousing, Washington DC
> http://www.takomavillage.org
>
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