Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Community size and number of units

[balaji (balaji]

Dear Cora,

Excellent questions, and I defer to others on the list to answer them
based on direct experience.  A few points occur to me as an anthropologist
who studies cohousing and community, and who also would like to live in
one.

The 18-36 household number conforms nicely to the definition
anthropologists typically give to the word "band."  Bands are the largest
social organization that possess the quality of (relative) egalitarianism.
 Think of the !Kung (Bushmen) of the Kalahari, or of any human society
prior to the advent of horticulture 10,000 years ago.  Cohousing
communities are essential band-level societies living in the midst of
complext nation states -- an interesting and unusual combination, but not
without precedents even in today's world.

On the question of children, however, there is a big difference.  Bands
reproduce themselves by having babies.  Cohousing communities generally
reproduce themselves through recruitment.  In fact, ICs in general have
adopted the latter approach, and therefore consist largely of younger
people (under 30) without children who stay on average 3-5 years.  Think
of Twin Oaks or Dancing Rabbit in this regard.

What would be interesting is a cohousing community that more band-like it
is ability to retain people multigenerationally.  This could be done by
encouraging kids to "stay on the farm" by adopting a domestic economy that
depends on family labor for its continuity.  (Dairy farming comes to
mind.)  Another way would be to adopt the practice of endogamy (marrying
only within the group), although I doubt this would sit well anyplace in
North America.  One could also imagine two (or more) cohousing communities
that routinely marry into each other's groups-- something anthropologists
call a "marital alliance system." None of these are terribly novel ideas
in the cross-cultural record.

In conclusion, the 18-35 household rule either does or does not work
depending on how those households are organized, and to what extent (if
any) they encourage 1.  having children and 2.  retaining children once
they have grown up to carry on the community.

Regards,

Charles
Utah Valley Commons
www.utahvalleycommons.com


>
> I have a couple of questions related to community density and
> functionality/hapiness:
> 1) has anyone done the following analysis on the Directories list: number
> of members of each community/community's number of units broken down by
> rural, suburban, urban? (What are the range and average densities of
> cohousing communities and does this vary in a predictable way, say by
> location?)
> 2) evaluation of the "18-36 units per community is best" "rule".
>    2a) Does number of people living there, number of kids, etc. influence
> the "truth" of this rule?
> Thanks.
> Cora
> Stony Brook Cohousing, forming in Boston
>
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