Cohousing-L Mailing List: Retrofit Cohousing / terminology

[Fred H Olson WB0YQM (fholson]

Kevin Wolf recently proposed a discussion at the October conference
on "how to best do "retrofit" co-housing".

I would like to endorse the use of the term "Retrofit Cohousing"
By this I assume he means cohousing that uses existing contiguous housing
with modified outdoor space usage patterns, provision of common space /
dining arrangements and  adoption of cohousing style organization and 
activities.  

   I think this would be a fair general description of N Street
Cohousing and of our (now defunct) proposal for Andersen Lane in 
Minneapolis.

   Sharing the defintion of useful terms is the first step in discussing
an idea.  I agree that retrofit cohousing needs more discussion.
For those of us who want to live in cities, retrofit cohousing
may be the most feasible and cost effective way to do cohousing.
We at Andersen Lane have already learned some things about how not to do
retrofit cohousing.

BTW it might be nice if we somehow were to come to some agreement
on the spelling / capitalization / punctuation of the term cohousing
itself.( CoHousing , co-housing, cohousing)  I personally prefer the 
latter since its easy to type and follows the pattern of cooperative.
Cooperative without a dash is the prefered spelling acording to Random
House dictionary which is what the literature department at the 
Minneapolis Public Library offered as the standard. This agrees with
my perception of current use. However cooperative is most often
abreviated "co-op" !

BTW I am using the term Intentional Neighborhood to mean something
much like retrofit cohousing except that the housing is not
contiguous tho in close proximity (a few blocks).  An intentional 
neighborhood might evolve into retrofit cohousing. I reject the 
term Virtual Cohousing (used in Cohousing Magazine, Winter '94 pg 22)
as conjuring images of something less tangible like online 
communities.

Fred

--
Fred H. Olson   fholson [at] uci.com   (612)588-9532  Amateur radio: WB0YQM
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