Cohousing-L Mailing List: Your community needs to think smaller to win bigger.

[Sharon Villines (sharon]

Another wonderful article from Strong Towns. This is a fabulous organization 
that helps communities do affordable upgrades and manage to sustain their 
balanced budgets — amongst many other things.

This story is from Strong Towns Community Action Lab which helps towns develop 
small approaches to resolve big problems. This is an approach that might help 
people develop cohousing communities where they are instead of looking for 
development funds for new construction. 

One thing that sinks small towns is accepting big money from the federal 
government or corporations that come with strings attached. The result is often 
a project that is expected to flatter the donor, not just serve the need it is 
aimed for, and will increase both maintenance and operations costs for 
residents for years — or for as long as the facility exists. 

Instead Strong Towns endorses small, low-cost approaches that can be 
implemented immediately. As in, start tomorrow.

One example is Medicine Hat, Alberta which had a half-million dollar plan to 
address the lack of public washrooms downtown. It would require new 
construction, it was costly, and it would be years before anyone saw a benefit. 
Cities that followed similar plans took on more liabilities and debts than they 
could afford. 

But Medicine Hat used the new way of thinking in Community Action Lab to 
develop a simple, low-cost approach. They hired security guards to oversee the 
public restrooms already built at the transit station so they were open 
overnight. 

They also did a survey of all the potential public restrooms in businesses and 
other buildings downtown and then made modifications and provided the services 
required to make them available to the public.

They created and printed a simple map on 8.5 x 11” paper at a copy shop, and 
zip-tied it to a light pole to direct people to public restrooms. No money was 
spent on shiny 5-color brochures required by the non-existent donors who wanted 
praise and recognition. Nothing to pollute the recycling bins.

If you think about cohousing as a neighborhood in a small town, similar 
thinking can create cohousing where you are, and you can start tomorrow.

https://www.strongtowns.org/

Sharon
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Sharon Villines, Washington DC

There is no reason to believe that bureaucrats and politicians, no matter how 
well-meaning, are better at solving problems than the people on the spot, who 
have the strongest incentive to get the solution right.

Elinor Ostrom, Nobel Prize in Economics, 2009