Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Scaling down

[Howard Landman (howard]

While I am also fond of a simple life, I'd like to play devil's advocate
in the downsizing debate if I may.  Because so many cohousers lean towards
"voluntary simplicity" and "affordability", there can be a tendency to
make cohousing units *too* small.  This then turns into "involuntary
simplicity" for people joining later.

Specifically, I have noticed the following trends and ideologies:

        - making garages too small, and parking lots cramped.  After all
          cars are evil and we don't want to waste any more space on them
          than absolutely necessary.  People with cars should be punished
          anyway - they're poisoning the planet for the rest of us.
          And after we're in cohousing we'll need fewer and smaller cars
          than we did before.
        
        - not designing in large units which would be comfortable for
          a family of 5 or more.  After all, population growth is evil
          and people shouldn't be having large families, so it's their
          own fault.  Besides, affordable = cheap = tiny.  And anyone
          who has enough money to afford that large a unit is probably
          a thief and not the kind of person we want in our community.
          (For that matter I don't see very many tiny 1 or 2 room units
          appropriate for a single elderly person either.)
        
        - not including enough storage space (Pattern Language recommends
          15%.)  After all, we're all going to give away all our
          possessions and live in voluntary simplicity, so no one will
          need room to store stuff, not even construction materials
          while finishing off their basement or landscaping materials
          while getting their yard in shape.  And the community as a
          whole certainly doesn't need any storage - let's finish off
          every square inch of the common house as living space.

I'm exaggerating a little bit here, but only a little, to make a point.
(Every opinion listed above is one I have heard *someone* in cohousing
espouse, but they're not at all ubiquitous.)  It's very easy for
idealistic thinking to lead to a design which only works well in the
ideal case which we never actually reach.  Real life is a bit messier
and more in transition than that.

Something I learned when having my unit built is that space is cheap.
It's all the fixtures that make a building expensive.  Having a closet
framed in, sheetrocked, and painted may well cost less than a single faucet
or light fixture.  Yes, there is a tradeoff between quantity and quality
for a fixed cost, but it's not as steep as you might think.

On the other hand, if smaller lets you use less *land*, and you're living
where land is incredibly expensive (like Silicon Valley), that might be
a substantial savings.  (But it also reduces your potential gains from
increases in real estate prices.)

It isn't "having too much space" which makes a building unlivable, but
rather "using the space poorly".  A bad design of a given square footage
costs just as much to build as a good design.  Shrinking doesn't
automagically make things better.  You still need to pay attention to
social spaces, their connection, traffic flow, lighting, etc., etc.
In fact, small units require even more "poetry" because you have to
pack multiple uses/meanings into single features to make them work.
(E.g. kitchen counter = waist-high shelf inside front door = divider
between kitchen and entry room = storage for pots & pans.)

Therefore I think it's more important to focus on such poetry, on
"getting the design to work", than on size per se.  It may turn out,
as you're reworking a design, that you realize you no longer need part
of it.  Fine then; throw that out, shrink it, tighten it up; your unit
may well become more vibrant, intense, and functional.  Or it may turn
out that you can spend the space on enhancing something else.  But it's
easy, if your primary goal is simply making things smaller, to go too far
and leave things cramped, uncomfortable, and worse, unfixable.  Avoid
that trap and you'll be much happier in the long run.

        Howard Landman