Cohousing-L Mailing List: Diversity is the point

[Collaborative Housing Society (cohosoc]

I didn't attend the face-to-face conference, but I'm very impressed with the
discussion going on in this electroconference, especially around the
ever-present issue of dealing with diversity.

In addition to Dan's comments about the Base Model, I thank Zev for
reminding us, in his most recent post, that getting along is what it's all
about.  That's why I increasingly describe coho as intentional
neighbourhood.  "Community" has become a way of describing a group of people
that share certain characteristics, or more exactly, preferences - race,
religion, sexuality, opposition or support for some issue.

The trouble with community is that it can become an ideology, a sort of club
that you join if you meet the right criteria.  If you don't quite match up,
well, start your own faction.

I have been getting a sense that this is one of the directions cohousing has
been heading in - one person around here calls it "compound cohousing", with
the visions of gates and barbed wire fully understood in the labelling.

"Neighbourhood", on the other hand, is not based on politics but geography.
Your neighbourhood is those people who share the place you live.  Guess
what.  Most of the time, you have no choice who your neighbours are.  The
test of a good neighbourhood is in finding ways to get along with people who
don't share your point of view, except for a desire to have a good place to
live their lives.

This is the need that cohousing addresses for me - a way of recognizing,
understanding and perhaps doing something about making good neighbourhoods.
If that means going out and building a new one, then so be it.  But it could
also mean inviting your neighbours to the next coho pot luck.  Maybe the
community you're looking for is already there, waiting to be born. . .

In the end, I remind you (and me, on a daily basis) that if you want good
neighbours, you have to be a good neighbour.  Maybe coho is a way of
recruiting good neighbours, or at least people who are predisposed to being
neighbourly.  I'm not sure I'd want to take it much beyond that.

Russell Mawby
Collaborative Housing Society - Toronto
cohosoc [at] web.apc.org