Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: About colors, design elements and how they influence

[Virginia Moreland (vmoreland]

>
>Or are these all secondary elements to the community aspects, the child
>friendliness, the social richness, the closeness?
>
>It would interesting to examine a build cohousing group that has say 50%
>turnover and see what attracted the people who bought the homes. Any
>sociologists looking for a project?
>
>Rob Sandelin
>Sharingwood, where the homes pretty much all blend into the background with
>earth tones.>
>

Rob and all,
  I'm not ready to go back to school yet, (M.A. sociologist and librarian
who always said I didn't want a Ph.D.) but if I did it would surely include
a good cohousing dissertation. But just today heard an interesting anecdote
that relates to this.  Lake Claire in Atlanta is a small coho community -
just twelve housholds. Two homes have turned over, both being purchased by
people with small children, and resulting in a significant change in the
balance of parental and non-parental units.  Could just be a coincidence,
but it makes some sense that during the riskier development and
construction phase folks with children might have more reservations than
those without kids; but once the place was occupied and humming with
child-friendly life (as your visitor so touchingly described at
Sharingwood!) it would be irresistable.

Ginny Moreland
East Lake Commons
Atlanta/Decatur GA

Where we just had an intense and productive five hour meeting to face fears
and concerns about both the large size (67 units) of the total community
and how we'll approach organizing our two sub-communities and two common
houses. (Fears of overwhelming size vs. fears of artificial boundaries,
segmenting the whole, and less efficient use of resources.) Also thanks to
several of you out there who responded to Paul Chen's inquiries and helped
inform this discussion!