Cohousing-L Mailing List: the individual/group teeter totter

[Tom Nelson Scott (veda]

On Thu, 27 Mar 1997, Denise Meier and/or Michael Jacob wrote:

> It was ridiculously hard! We had three or four meetings plus numerous
> email exchanges, and it just was not happening. Somehow I thought this
> name would arise from a light moment when someone made a comment during a
> completely unrelated discussion, and then we'd all say "Hey! That's it!!" 
> Instead we had brainstorming after brainstorming, and wasted tons of time
> with silly (and rarely very funny, in my grumpy opinion)  suggestions. 
> Anything with a bit of life to it struck someone else wrong, and a lot of
> things (e.g. Something Woods, or Something Oaks) were dismissed as
> "sounding like a condo development" (I hate to break this to you, folks,
> but we ARE a condo development!) 

Denise raises two related questions in my mind: First, how does a
community avoid meeting overload? Even a meeting junkie can get burned
out in coho decision making, big time, real fast. We've all heard the
horror stories. Is there a way to avoid this?

Secondly, does the condo model lend itself to more efficient cohousing
decision procedures? Evidently not in all cases: Denise's condo-type
community is evidence that a seemingly simple and straightforward task
of selecting a name can drag on and on and on ... What hope have we
for ever resolving more sensitive issues in more tightly knit
organizations?

My preferences lean toward the private-property, private-enterprise
end of the spectrum. But I want to live in community, out in the
country, clustered around a group of non-residential amenities like a
school, a preventive medicine health center, a cafeteria/restaurant,
and an organic CSA farm. Yes, this is a dream, but I wonder if anyone
has come close to it and can help others move in that direction?

Case in point: A friend owned a farm and hired a family to run
it. After working under those conditions for awhile, it became obvious
that the operation would move more quickly into profitability if the
family who ran the farm owned it. So the sale was made and the rest is
history: The farm is profitable and things are running
smoothly now.

A similar case could be made for private ownership of residential
units. 

Given that, what can we do to plan and develop a coho/ecovillage that
avoids the extreme of the isolationist business-as-usual subdivision
and the extreme of total community immersion where one has to go to
committee for every little thing? How can we plan, develop and operate
community amenities (school, health center, telecenter, eating
facility, farm) and avoid death by committee?

Is there a mixture of private ownership/enterprise and community
commitment that works? Got any living examples?

-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tom Nelson Scott                  Phone/Fax: 1-414-966-2902
[company name]                    Business email: tom.scott [at] veda-home.com
W330 N8357 West Shore Drive       Academic email: veda [at] csd.uwm.edu
Hartland WI 53029-9732            Academic web: http://www.uwm.edu/~veda
                     "Do less, accomplish more."                       
-------------------------------------------------------------------------