Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Don't Have Two Cents

[Stuart Staniford-Chen (stanifor]

Bill Dean writes:

> I have no trouble adapting to 
> the features I find in the buildings where I live or work, and have 
> rather be among those who would try to get something going at a 
> condoplex.
> 
> I wonder if my attitude represents a tiny minority or is typical of 
> some potential cohousers.

I've thought about this question quite a bit.  I devote some of my spare
time to various activities designed to promote people doing cohousing
organically (ie converting existing structures gradually to cohousing).

That's because I live in N St Cohousing which is 13 regular old suburban
houses converted to a cohousing community over a period of 9 years (and
still converting).  If you don't know about us, check out our Web pages
at http://seclab.cs.ucdavis.edu/cohousing/specific/n_street/

Anyway, my experience is that by the time people have identified to
themselves that they would like to live in cohousing, they have bought
into the idea that they can have "the perfect community".  It will be all
new and spiffy and they will get to design every last part of it *right*.
Given this, they are generally luke warm about organic approaches - there
is a certain unavoidable lack of control about doing things gradually, and
things tend to be messy and uncertain to begin with.

So, to a certain extent, I'm casting around for new markets to try and
appeal to with this idea.  I thought that maybe the intentional community
movement would be a good place.  However, it seems to me that a lot of 
those folks have already bought into a different dream - getting away from
nasty bad civilization and living on a 1000 acres of beautiful land in the
country.  (I haven't given up though - the intentional community movement
is very diverse, and there are a lot of communities of one urban co-operative
house which potentially could grow).

I'm wickedly thinking that burnt out ex-cohousers might be good people to
educate about organic cohousing, since they still have the dream but are
much more acutely aware of how hard the conventional process is.  Building
cohousing organically is really a lot less work!  Honestly, it is.  It's
more uncertain and you have less control, but it is definitely less work. 

There are days when I wonder if we shouldn't just call ourselves something
different altogether, write another book, and try to market the idea out
to the public generally (I guess "Rebuilding Community in America" was
basically trying to do this, though).

Thank God it's Friday,

Stuart.
(going back to proposal writing now)