Cohousing-L Mailing List: Cohousing and Urban Sprawl

[Fred H Olson (fholson]

I plan to attend the "Tour de Sprawl" here in the Twin Cities
on Sunday.  I got to thinking about our recent discussion of 
"city vs. country " and how cohousing fits in.  I have a modest 
proposal to help keep us aware of thr problem.

Development on the urban fringe that constitutes sprawl roughly
corresponds to development beyond the availability of municipal 
sewage.  In many (most?) places, controls are in place that
restrict density of developments that do not have municipal sewage 
access.  For example a cohousing community may be resticted to 15 units
rather than the 30 they really want.

In light of this I propose that we strive to include in lists of features
of communities and proposed communities, related databases etc, prominent
indication the type of sewage handling a site has or will have.
I presume that most groups who get down to looking for sites keep this in
mind already, but let me emphasize the key nature of sewage.

Fred H. Olson

advocate of retrofit cohousing
http://freenet.msp.mn.us/housing/cohousing/homewood/
(We plan another attempt to start a neighborhood potluck this fall.)

Fred H. Olson  fholson [at] tc.umn.edu    Minneapolis   55411  
(612)588-9532  Amateur radio: WB0YQM          List manager of:
Cohousing-L  See www.cohousing.org        and      nbhd-tc  the
Twin Cities Neighborhood issues list. See www.freenet.msp.mn.us