Re: Statistics on common house usage | <– Date –> <– Thread –> |
From: Sharon Villines (sharonsharonvillines.com) | |
Date: Mon, 17 May 2021 08:28:03 -0700 (PDT) |
On May 16, 2021, at 9:52 PM, Janey Harper <jkharper [at] telus.net> wrote: > I'm currently working on a project that will be built in Sechelt BC. The > designer/developer I'm working with would like to see some statistics on how > much the community kitchen/dining room/lounge area REALLY gets used in > cohousing communities. I recently read two wonderful books by a British economist Mariana Mazzucato on the absence of “value" in economic arguments and the myth of public and private as distinct and separable. Her insights are very applicable to cohousing. I highly recommend these books. She has a wonderful gift for translating economic principles into daily life experiences. I’ve tried for years to understand the GDP with no success. Finally, she has confirmed for me that it truly is arbitrary and has meaning only within its own obscure definition of itself. Economists groan. The Value of Everything: Making and Taking in the Global Economy https://amzn.to/33LXWDc The Entrepreneurial State: Debunking Public and Private Sector Myths https://amzn.to/3fldza8 Her new one that I have’t read is Mission Economy: A Moonshot Guide to Changing Capitalism. https://amzn.to/3w9ola8 The two points I think are most important to cohousing is that economics doesn’t measure value and there isn't a meaningful distinction between personal and in common. 1. Cost and statistics are not designed to measure value. For politicians justifying budget decisions they are meaningful but only in that context. When trying to understand value, these numbers have (almost) no meaning. 2. The distinction between public and private can only be made if you make one up. It’s fabricated depending on your purposes. One of Mazzucato's examples is that “public" funds support research institutes and universities that do basic “no economic value” research. The “private” sector then puts the results into useful products or services that earn money and produce economic growth. The take-home for cohousing is that the common-individual distinction has little value except to identify or assign sources of funding. Does the value of something change if it is switched from one column to the other? Is basic research less valuable than applied research results? How much is the value of my unit based on the unit and how much on the surrounding common space. It’s an impossible distinction whether I look at resale value or at personal enjoyment. Questions about the common house are usually centered on hours per day of use and which rooms are used the most? The hope is that these numbers can be meaningfully used to cut costs. Cost can be determinative if you don’t have any money. But when you have a choice, what value does this thing have or might have in contributing to building or strengthening the community. If you identify value before identifying the cost, the question becomes can you get the same value out of something less expensive? Does the granite countertop produce better food or better after dinner conversations? It might if your community values the designer look in kitchens. It makes (some) people feel happy and proud of the community. The difficulty of measuring value is that communities have to make these decisions before they know what will be most important to them. People’s interests and the expression of those interests in the common house won’t necessarily be the same. Some people will only work puzzles in the common house and others only in their own units. They can both talk puzzle, however, and puzzles have benefits. But value in terms of community are tricky to define, too. Laundry rooms are characterized as important because they bring people together in the common house. Most of our residents use the outside door to the laundry room to go in and out, and very rarely does anyone fold laundry in the common house. Every once in a while someone watches TV while their laundry washes but not often. The laundry room, however, “feels” like community space because so many people value it. Even when they use it one at a time and never go into the rest of the CH it feels like a group activity. A group would rise up in unison if there was a suggestion of eliminating it. One community had a person who played the piano after meals and a group would gather around to sing. Without that one person would there be a piano? If the piano broke, would it be fixed? I doubt if the value of the piano would be very high without that one person. And without the number of people who like to sing. And the number of people who like listening. And the number of people who are just happy that the piano playing occurs whether they participate or not. I never watch sports and watching the finals of things was one of the main reasons to get a TV in the CH. But I love it that people are so happy and enthusiastic while watching sports and will often knit in the corner watching the watchers. A question like “Do you watch the World Series?” or “How many sporting events do you watch each month” would not measure the value of a TV in the CH. A sociologist once told me that the first thing sociologists do when studying a group of people is to identify the common means of communication. That defines a community — they have developed and can communicate with each other. I’ll have to ask him how important it is that a community has a place to gather. Sharon ——— Sharon Villines http://affordablecohousing.com
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Statistics on common house usage Janey Harper, May 16 2021
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Re: Statistics on common house usage Ann Zabaldo, May 16 2021
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Re: Statistics on common house usage Ann Zabaldo, May 17 2021
- Re: Statistics on common house usage Allison Tom, May 17 2021
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Re: Statistics on common house usage Ann Zabaldo, May 17 2021
- Re: Statistics on common house usage Sharon Villines, May 17 2021
- Re: Statistics on common house usage Elizabeth Magill, May 17 2021
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Re: Statistics on common house usage Ann Zabaldo, May 16 2021
- Re: Statistics on common house usage Sharon Villines, May 17 2021
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