Cohousing-L Mailing List: Public Good and Social Change

[Graham Meltzer (g.meltzer]

Greetings to friends and aquaintances in the US and Canada ... some of whom
may have thought I'd dropped dead after leaving your shores.  Yes, I have
been a lousy correspondent.  But faithfull lurking has kept me in touch with
the very exciting developments of the last 12 months ... all that positive
publicity and the conference etc.  Things are slowly beginning to happen
here too. Fledgling cohousing groups have formed near Brisbane and a
Tasmainian group has landed a very large affordable housing grant.  

Anyway, having got to work this Monday morning and picked up on the
'exclusiveness, elitism & public good' thread which had developed over the
weekend, I was prompted to contact Matt Kiefer who wrote,

>cohousing has the potential to influence  housing design far 
>out of proportion to its numbers.  In market-driven housing, the very 
>powerful force of risk avoidance acts to stifle innovation.  Cohousing 
>removes the market risk and allows communities to be designed the way they 
>want to be, without having to always look over your shoulder at the market. 
>So my prescription for how to get cohousing to be taken more seriously is 
>to keep pushing the edge of the envelope with compactness (which the New 
>Urbanists love but the market sometimes resists), district heating, 
>composting tiolets, xeriscaping, open space preservation, and other 
>forward-looking design strategies.  Make sure that, after they're built, 
>communities are run well,  bank loans are repaid on schedule, and  resale 
>values are maintained.  Then wait.  As Thoreau knew, the world will beat a 
>path to your door.

I couldn't agree more with Mark and would like to add a few thoughts of my
own ....so here goes.

I agree with the suggestion that the significance of cohousing will not be
tied to the number of communities built.  It has the potential to influence
future  housing and urban design far beyond the fuzzy edges of the cohousing
movement itself.  I believe cohousing demonstrates above all else, a
civilized way to live in compact, urban situations where the pressures of
residing cheek by jowl with increasingly stressed human beings could
otherwise lead us into unchecked violence and chaos.  It is through
differing conceptions of community that our best chances of survival, let
alone sustainability are located.  Future manifestations of community cannot
accurately be anticipated. The shape of community in 50 years time is likely
to be (like all else) transformed and transmuted by other technological and
societal forces.  But its essential components; sharing, cooperation, mutual
aid, member well-being within the context of a greater good etc ... will
still hold.

Cohousing is different from most past and present examples of intentional
community in one critically important respect ... most cohousing communities
are located in cities and their members are committed to linking with the
mainstream and supporting its institutions.  This is a radically different
philosophical position to that of being an alternative to, or in opposition
to society ... which almost all intentional communities have been until now.
And it is just this difference which offers potential for significant
cultural and social change.  The recent flurry of positive publicity and the
affirmation in Seattle of the importance of a (national) network are
significant early developments in what I envisage will be the key role
cohousing plays in the reworking of the principles and practice of urban
development.  Call it a paradigm shift if you like ... or just plain
evolutionary cultural change.  Whatever the theoretical take, cohousing is
here to stay ... and likely to significantly influence the shape of
neighbourhoods, precincts, towns and cities of the future.  

Sustainability, in its essential meaning, is about continuity.  It's about
maintaining and sustaining what is valuable in both the human and non-human
worlds.  We could start into a discussion of values here ... and perhaps
should.  Our values, ie. what we believe to be valuable, is central to the
discussion of sustainability.  But if, for the sake of time and space, we
assume that matters of species diversity, resource conservation, social
equity, environmental quality etc are central factors, then I think it's
clear that cohousing offers a model which can usefully inform the discussion
and therefore the future direction of urban development. 

Mark's point about cohousing reducing preoccupation with marketability is
very important. If there was one aspect of US cohousing which I found
disappointing it was  ... with a few obvious exceptions ... its generally
conservative housing form.  It would be nice to think that in time, as
cohousing development becomes easier and the concept more accepted, the
architecture will begin more confidently to express and represent the brave
and quite radical social agenda being pursued by the residents.  The obvious
ways to do this are with building compactness, space minimization, land use
efficiencies, centralized services etc.  These measures, almost by default
... without necessarily deriving from any radical green ideology and simply
as natural outcomes of an architecture of community ... are essential
components of the model of sustainable urban form mentioned above.  And
that's why it's important, as Mark suggests, for cohousing communities to be
consciously pushing these boundaries.  God knows, the paradigm shift needs
to happen sooner rather than later.  

I acknowledge that our conditioning makes living close with others
difficult... both physically and in terms of social relations.  Sharing
requires trust ... but trust is built on sharing.  Unfortunately, the trust
that social and political institutions will deliver just outcomes has been
almost completely eroded.  Rebuilding trust at the level of community is
bound to be a slow process.  But, whether or not it is part of a mission
statement, that is what cohousing groups implicitly are about.  They seek to
develop a trust in each other and the group's institutions which facilitates
sharing, cooperation and a generosity of spirit.  In time this can lead to
more intimate and open social relations.  It can diffuse or deconstruct our
instilled preoccupation with individual well-being and turn the focus
outward to the welfare of others.  This in itself is a essential ingredient
of a consciousness of sustainability ... for what is it,if it is not a
concern for the well-being of others yet unborn.  

I'd like to thank Don Lindeman for initiating this discussion.  As faculty
of a design school, I too have experienced the hostility he felt at
Berkeley's College of Environmental Design.  Fortunately, the tide is
turning in academia ... at least in Australia. But apart from that, I think
that academics who pontificate in symposiums are going to be rendered as
irrelevant as some of them claim cohousing is going to be.  From what I have
seen of US cohousing and what is already appearing on the horizon of social
change ... I think we can already be assured that cohousing is going to have
an enormous influence in the years to come.

Best wishes to you all,

Graham 


Graham Meltzer 

School of Architecture, Interior and Industrial Design
Queensland University of Technology, 
GPO Box 2434, Brisbane, Australia 4001.

Tel:(617)38642535(w)  (617)38702090(h)  Fax:(617)38641528

"The neccessity to unite with other human beings, to be related to them,
is an imperative need on the fulfillment of which, man's sanity depends" 
                 E. Fromm (The Sane Society(1965))