Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Coho & LIFESTYLE CHANGES--> Sustainability?

[Judy (BAXTER%EPIHUB]

ON Fri, 03 Mar 1995 12:17 -0600 (CST) STUART WROTE:
From: Stuart Staniford-Chen <stanifor [at] cs.ucdavis.edu>

<<Living sustainably = not taking part in the fucking of the world.  It's 
not about saving it.

Your (ROB'S)current message is a lot clearer - you are saying that you are not 
very interested in being sustainable, rather than that you would be if 
only you had more time.  >>
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Stuart, I think (and I think you sort of implied this)  that living sustainably
is a process, as is cohousing, and people come to it in different times and at
different paces.  What I see is that Cohousers tend to be idealistic, to
different degrees.  And one of the attractions of the model is that it can take
many forms, from N Street to Southside Park to Monterey to ... to  (whatever -
I hesitate to name  a high end of the spectrum.  Cohousing clearly encourages
many life style aspects which ARE good for the planet.  AND so far, my
experience is that many people are not (yet?) willing to give up much of their
lifestyle, space, etc, to move to coho, adjust, and pay for common amenities. 
And, unfortunately, many that *would* can't afford new construction. And the 
less
expensive options are not readily available.  I don't know of many, besides N
Street, Southside, and parts of Monterey.

Remember, we are pioneers.

MoCoCo has clearly had the value that we would rather live in cohousing some
year soon (cross your fingers, hope to break ground for the new construction
this spring) rather than a very, very ecologically sound development who knows
when.  Given limited time and energy, we chose.  For now.  And everything has
taken longer than we thought.  And we will do various things in future.  And we
hope things will get easier for other groups.  So far, people don't seem to be
jumping on the bandwagon as fast as we'd hoped.  So, I have to be glad we have
something.

I'm curious, I assume the N Street model has gotten lots of awareness thru the
whole cohousing thing - does anyone know of groups following that example?  It
is very appealling to me.

Judy

Judy Baxter, Monterey Cohousing Community, (MoCoCo)
Twin Cities Area, Minneapolis/St.Paul Minnesota
e-mail: baxter [at] epivax.epi.umn.edu