Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Scaling down

[Matt Lawrence (matt]

On Tue, 24 Oct 2000, Howard Landman wrote:

> 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.

You mean people actually put automobiles in their garages?  What a waste.
That space is soooo much more useful for building things.  :-)
        
>       - 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.)

I visited Liberty Village in Maryland a couple of weeks ago, the largest
units were certainly big enough for a family of five.  In fact, the
concept of adding a couple of doors and having plenty of space and plenty
of privacy for four or five single people crossed my mind.

>       - 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.

Yeah, storage space is important.  I'm also trying to figure out what to
do with my library of over 10,000 books.  Personally, I'd love to see a
common house library become a common feature, I'm willing to share lots of
my books, and I'll bet other people feel the same way.

-- Matt