Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re. Housing Enmasse

[OtisWalker (OtisWalker]

I'm writing in response to Blake Cullimore's question 
about whether cohousing can work with 170 units 
on 25 acres.  I think that this is the real challenge.  
Sure, we cohousers like to think of oursselves as 
rather independent neighborhoods within a larger community, self-sufficient
and somewhat isolated, buffered by 
the open space that we have preserved around us from the surrounding
ticky-tacky.  I know many of us are 
concerned about not turning our backs on the larger 
community, though, and wonder how to integrate our 
little "village", both physically and socially, into the 
larger context. 

Now Blake has an opportunity in his design class 
to "build" such a context from scratch.  Sure 170 houses 
could not form one cohousing community.  
But what about five?  I know in Denmark they have 
tried large-scale, multi-community cohousing 
(see Dorit Fromm's book on Cooperative Communities) 
and it has not been as successful as small-scale, 
but maybe it has to be structured very differently. 
Or Blake could try several cohousing communities 
and some more conventional clustered housing, still 
sharing some kind of village center.  But the point is, to be 
able to design communities that function well 
on their own and as pieces of a larger whole 
is very important for areas that may have to be more 
densely developed in the future.

Meg