Cohousing-L Mailing List: ECO-COHOUSING

[vipin bharathan (vipin]

Hi,

There was an article in today's NY Times about a community in the
Netherlands which had adopted environmentally friendly architecture
in building living areas. The use of sod-roofing, solar energy for
heating/cooling and recycled/recyclable materials for building, the
promotion of pedestrians and human-powered vehicles were some of the
features mentioned in this article.

I was curious whether such communities exist in North America. The
size of such a community would be somewhat larger than that of a typical
cohousing community (although the size mentioned in the article is 
101 houses), since only that kind of scale would allow the community to
be viable not just in terms of the immediate living environment, but also
in influencing the policies for a larger environment like a township,
or a municipality or a village.

It would be interesting to blend the features in cohousing with building
practices and other living habits in order to be in harmony with the
environment. As cohousing advocates and practitioners, many of you would
already have thought about these questions and even put it into practice.
I am interested in a discussion centered around the building of larger
eco-cohousing communities.

Thanks,
--
VB