Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Possible definitions of different types of choosing

[Sharon Villines (sharon]

On Dec 19, 2013, at 2:59 PM, Kevin Wolf <kevinjwolf [at] gmail.com> wrote:

> Nor should we really call a cohousing community a "neighborhood".  Non-rural 
> cohousing are subsets of neighborhoods. 

A story: When my daughter was two she asked me, "When are we home? Sometimes 
you say we are home when we drive by the school and sometimes when we come down 
the street and sometimes when we are parking and sometimes when we come in the 
door. When are we home?"

I thought about it and realized it was related to how far away we had been. 
After an airplane trip, the airport felt like home. If I was returning from a 
visit to a neighbor across the hall, I only felt "home" when I had not only 
entered my apartment but also closed my door.

I think neighborhood is similarly a relative term. In addition to being one 
neighborhood, at Takoma Village we have two neighborhoods: one on  the green 
mostly in townhouse style, and one around the pizza in apartment style. It's a 
physical division but physical divisions create communities of interest. A 
community of interest in which we live, is a neighborhood.

Does anyone know the origins of the word "neighborhood"? Is it limited to 
cities?

It's kind of a weird word when you say it 10 times.

Sharon
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Sharon Villines
Takoma Village Cohousing, Washington DC
http://www.takomavillage.org