Cohousing-L Mailing List: RE: Design's Impact on Cohousing

[Rob Sandelin (Exchange) (Robsan]

One notion to be cautious about is that social networking CAN'T happen 
UNLESS you have the prescribed elements. I have heard cohousing architects 
make this sort of statement and also have seen it in print.   Most 
experience from the intentional communities movement suggests otherwise, as 
most non-cohousing communities are not designed all at once in one grand 
plan but sort of grow up organically over time.  (Like N-St. for example) 
and have few if any of the social networking features as listed previously.

The nature of Cohousing as an intentional community is that social 
networking is a key element of it and an expectation of the folks who want 
to live there.  Social networking therefore happens, completely independent 
of any design of the site because it is what the people want to do - that's 
why they joined in the first place. It is the expectation and 
intentionality of social networking that sets intentional communities apart 
from other non-intentional neighborhoods.  If you are designing from 
scratch you can and should include design elements to make social 
networking easier, but if you are retrofitting an existing space don't 
worry, social networking will happen.  Its the whole point of cohousing and 
people will create places to make it happen if they are not designed into 
the site.  Sharingwood started out doing community dinners by rotating 
dinners among our houses.  What a hassle!  We did this for over a year 
because we wanted to and we wanted to do community dinner. Five years 
later, our commonhouse is finally coming together, and we are doing 
community dinner in a basement and outside on picnic tables.  The fact we 
had no commonhouse didn't stop us from doing what we wanted to do.  So, in 
my experience, as long as the intentionality of social networking is the 
key part of your community, the facilities you have to work with will not 
dictate your success in social networking.

Rob Sandelin
Sharingwood