Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Small communities

[Jennifer Lynn Mccoy (poljlm]

        At Lake Claire in Atlanta, we were limited to 12 units because of
the size of the land (1 acre).  The founders deliberately chose the site,
however, to be in a specific neighborhood that is very interested in and
conducive to cohousing.  We have just moved in, so I can only comment on
the development phase, but I can say that our group has been quite
conscious of the risks of inbredness and the other dangers that Joani
talked about.  We were also worried about claustrophobia from such a tight
site.

        We had a weekend retreat midway through construction to help build
community, and it came out that a number of people were worried about "not
fitting in" or about cliques forming.  So we brainstormed on ways to avoid
that possibility.  We also planned from the beginning to have neighborhood
involvement in community dinners and other activities to help increase the
diversity.

        So far, we have found our size (20 adults, 9 kids, in 12 units) to
have similar results to others reported:

1.  Shared costs are higher.
 2.  Spread of workload is not even and having few people to share it
creates large work burdens. 
 3.  Easier to get the group together (literally and figuratively). 
4.  We have a real sense of community, and so far don't have a sense of
"too closeness or too smallness."
5.  Great design has helped mitigate the small lot size.


Jennifer McCoy  (jmccoy [at] gsu.edu)
Lake Claire, Atlanta