Cohousing-L Mailing List: site location/size and children (was Households to Adults Ratios)

[C2pattee (C2pattee]

i want to draw an inference here (so check me if i'm wrong) and ask a 
question.

two communities we hear from frequently (with very valuable info-this is not 
the debatable part) are Takoma Village Cohousing, Washington DC and 
Cambridge, massachusetts Cohousing.  both seem to be built on relatively 
small sites, in townhouse/apartment style, and have very few children.  (have 
i described you correctly?)

here's my question - do you see a relationship between your location/site 
size and the number of children in the community?  i ask because our greater 
hartford, connecticut cohousing group has just two families with children, 
and would like to attract more.  we are presently looking for a site, and its 
size and location have mostly been related to economics and geographic 
preference.  anybody got any opinions on the relationship between site 
location and size, and attracting families with children?

Christine Pattee
Greater Hartford CT Cohousing
c2pattee [at] aol.com

In a message dated 4/27/01 1:01:54 PM Eastern Daylight Time, 
cohousing-l-request [at] cohousing.org writes:


> Message: 3
> Date: Fri, 27 Apr 2001 11:06:05 -0400
> Subject: Re: [C-L]_Households to Adults Ratios
> From: Sharon Villines <sharonvillines [at] prodigy.net>
> To: <cohousing-l [at] cohousing.org>
> Reply-To: cohousing-l [at] cohousing.org
>
> The point of the ratios of units to adults is to see if it makes any sense
> to measure the size of cohousing communities by counting units.
>
> Unit counts seem to be standard in descriptions sent to the list but what do
> unit counts mean? 
>
> Counting active (or reasonably alive) adults gives a count, at least, of the
> number of people who can influence community decisions and/or bargaining
> power when purchasing goods.
>
> One person reported the number of bedrooms. That may a better way to get a
> sense of the relative sizes of different communities.
>
> Counting children gives another view. I can't imagine living in a community
> with 29 children and it must be very different than living in a community
> with 4 which is what we have now (3 moving in in 2 months, others unborn).
> But that is a different dimension than I was/am trying to get a sense of.
>
> Not a scientific study. Only to be published back to the list.
>
> Sharon
> -- 
> Sharon Villines
> Takoma Village Cohousing, Washington DC
> http://www.takomavillage.org




Christine Pattee
Greater Hartford CT Cohousing
c2pattee [at] aol.com