Cohousing-L Mailing List: Environmental aspects of design

[Eric D. Hart (harte]

        I am currently writing an article for the cohousing journal about 
how to incorporate environmental aspects into your communities design.  I 
have experience with one group incorporating environmental aspects into 
their design but want to know what other groups have done.  Ideally I 
would like to know how environmental criteria got introduced into your 
group (member initiative, professional involvement, etc.), how you 
decided what things were the most important to include in the design, and 
how you communicated these criteria to the design professionals you 
were working with.  Many groups have a desire to include environmental 
aspects into their designs but I am interested in finding out how you got 
beyond that 'wouldn't it be nice' phase into actually including these 
sorts of things in a community design.  My guess is that often it is a 
subset of the group that is interested in this sort of thing who 
introduces the concepts to the group and pushes the process along.  I am 
very intersted in how this process goes and what sorts of group process 
snags and problems that are encountered when such ideas are introduced.  
Including environmental criteria in design can trigger many 
'hot buttons' and issues that people might otherwise avoid.  One I can 
think of is shared walls.  Having shared walls makes a lot of sense from 
an environmental standpoint but many people have an adversion to sharing 
walls from bad experiences they have had in the past.  Anyway I would be 
interested in hearing from any of you who have experience in this area.  
You can send it to me directly or to the list if you think it is 
appropriate.  Thanks in advance.

Eric Hart
harte [at] freenet.msp.mn.us