Cohousing-L Mailing List: RE: Value of Design Consultants?

[Rob Sandelin (Floriferous]

I would encourage any group that is in that twilight area between having 
organized a group for awhile and finding and securing a site to begin by 
programming your commonhouse.

You can define the activies, the attributes, and the relationships of your 
commonhouse years before you ever get a real site. This gives you three 
things.
1. Something very tangle to do as a group. This can be a real community 
building experience and a lot of fun, and very exciting
2. Produces a product that you can use in the future when you get a site
3. Most important: gives you experience in the give and take of group work, 
something you will enourmously benfit from as you proceed, especially when you 
start designing your units and site layout. The skills you gain are worth the 
time, even if you throw the whole thing out later and redo it. And having 
those skills under your collective belt will really help when you hit the 
issues people will have about their own personal spaces like bathrooms and 
such.

Rob Sandelin
Sharingwood