Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Plenty of space on Colorado tour, April 16

[Fred H Olson (fholson]

On Sat, 2 Apr 2005, Joani Blank wrote:

> Dear Friends,
> 
> I will be leading the first Colorado cohousing tour that's "open to the 
> public" on April 16. And we want YOU to come along!  In addition to leading 
> close to a dozen  Northern California tours over the last 5 years
> 
> Two couples signed up for the upcoming April 16 tour are coming from
> Wisconsin and New York respectively, and we welcome people from
> everywhere. ... especially hoping to
> interest more Coloradans in joining us for the tour.

Hey Joani, sounds like you're developing a new career...  Sounds like a 
great way to leverage a cluster of existing communities.  Do You have 
plans to have a video version for thos of us for whom all the clusters are 
a long distance?

I just had an idea  ...

> there's nothing
> like o tour of several cohousing communities with a group of like-minded
> others,  to help clarify for yourself if cohousing is right for you or 
> you and your family.

Remember the "Open Space Technology" used to plan the agenda for the 1997 
cohousing converence in Seattle? 
( see http://lists.cohousing.org/pipermail/cohousing-l/msg07016.html ) 

Suppose you identified contrasting features of communities visited, posted
them on a bulletin board and had tour participants 'vote' for features
they liked.  This might help find folks who have similar preferences.  
The experience of just having seen the feature would be very helpful, I'd
think.  Unlike systems for finding common interests of a group of folks,
the idea is to find folks who have shared interests.  Similar but a bit
different.

Features that come to mind:

Highline Crossing's increased density thru second floor units with balcony 
     overlooking the pedestrian street.
More spread out communities.
Urban ambience of Nomad Cohousing 
More rural with Mountain Views

if you could observe them, you could include various contrasting social 
patterns: lots of kids vs fewer;  structured vs less formal organization 
etc.

Fred  

--   
Fred H. Olson  Minneapolis,MN 55411  USA        (near north Mpls)
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