Cohousing-L Mailing List: developer driven cohousing: Can it be a community?

[Rob Sandelin (Exchange) (Robsan]

Bill Dean wrote
In my past experiences with community living, twice I joined  
ongoing communities, and once I helped create a community but on a 
plot of land with pre-existing houses.  I have no trouble adapting to 
the features I find in the buildings where I live or work, and have 
no particular interest or desire in designing buildings.  I would 
rather be among those who would try to get something going at a 
condoplex.


One very real issue regarding developer driven cohousing is what criteria 
selects the people who buy the units into a community?  Suppose a developer 
designed and built a complete cohousing community with commonhouse, etc. 
without any resident input, just copied the layout of an existing project 
and then just advertised in the local real estate market and in the Sunday 
paper as X-cohousing community now has units for sale.  What would bring the 
people who buy into such a place, and would they have any different 
relationship to their neighbors than a typical condo project?

What builds community amoung a group of people?  Why do cohousing 
communities have a sense of community and similar condo projects do not? 
  These issues have been explored on this list in the recent past so I wont 
dredge it all up, but if developer driven cohousing is to succeed, attention 
needs to be paid to building community amoung the residents, otherwise you 
get none of the real benefits of cohousing.  Community is NOT in the 
architecture or the buildings, it's the realtionship of the people to each 
other. I'm not sure very many developers would understand this very well, if 
at all. There is a condo project just down the road from where I work which 
on the outside is cohousing. Its pedestrian, has a  central community 
center, units have good visual contact with the gathering areas, etc.  But 
according to one of my coworkers who has lived there three years now, there 
is no community amoung the residents - They are all pretty much strangers. 
Less so perhaps than some places, they do have a "christmas party" each 
year, but that is the extent of their "community".

How do you "sell" a condo project with an expectation of relationship 
attached? Especially if that relationship expectation doesn't already exist 
but has to be built amoung complete strangers.  I'm not sure this would work 
unless you advertised the relationship aspect to recruit only those who want 
community, and even then I'm not sure it would work if you tried to do it 
from scratch without some sort of major orientation, community building 
sessions. 

Anyone who has tried to market cohousing finds that the community aspects of 
cooperation, sharing, commitment to the group scare off a fair number of 
people. I have to care about my neighbors, and consider whats best of 
everyone, not just me? You've got to be kidding!

  This, in my opinion, is the key element which a developer driven cohousing 
scheme would have to solve.  If you ignore building the relationships, then 
all you have is another condo, populated by strangers. 

Rob Sandelin