Cohousing-L Mailing List: Cohousing Axioms - Development

[Mac & Sandy Thomson (ganesh]

This is a very interesting theory that Chris proposes.  I think it has
merit, although I'm not sure that I agree with it altogether.

We developed Heartwood Cohousing ourselves (with some consulting help
from Jim Leach), but I don't think we suffered all of the calamities
Chris mentioned.  Although our group developed our community, the group
didn't tightly control the development process.  That's because we
didn't do much of the detailed development work as a group.  I was given
incredible latitude as Project Manager and in the many years that I
worked full time in that position, I handled most of the details and
mostly brought only the 'big' decisions to the group.  We also had
numerous teams that attended to detail work as well as an Assistant
Project manager that I hired from within our group who did a phenomenal
job during the year and a half of the big design and construction
crunch.  Perhaps we avoided much of the development burnout because of
the big time delegation we did.

Some of the points Chris brought up really rang a bell with me.  One is
the notion that putting too much energy into private home design sucks
the energy out of a group.  I would go further and say that the current
model of cohousing development focuses way too much energy on design,
including common house and site design.  Our group had 5 major weekend
workshops before move-in: site design, common house design, 2 private
home design, and consensus training.  Of the 5, I think the consensus
training was by far the most valuable in terms of group cohesion and
community building.

Consensus training is really a bit of a misnomer.  The workshop really
dealt with communication skills, feedback model, in depth discussion of
vision, values, and interpersonal agreements, and how we run our
meetings (both practical and philosophical).  We required all new
members to take consensus training before being able to vote.  Because
we acquired members over time, we offered the training several times. 
The first time we hired a corporate team building guy for about $1500
who did a good job.  After that, however, we taught the training
ourselves (in house) and were better able to custom tailor it to our
culture and save $1500 a pop.

One thing that occurred to me during all of the design workshops was
that we pretty much always started at ground zero with brainstorming
ideas and after many, many hours, we developed programs and designs that
didn't seem all that different from what I've seen at other cohousing
communities.  Our common house has a dining room, kitchen, hearth room
(living room), romp room, bathrooms, entry with mail, rec room, guest
rooms, laundry, arts and crafts room, and storage.  We have 2, 3, and 4
bedroom private homes -- some duplex, some singles -- all with kitchens
to the front.  We incorporated energy efficiency and passive solar
throughout.  I think we could have not started at ground zero and
instead said, "Here's what other communities have done, how do we want
to modify that to fit our particular needs?"  We could have saved maybe
half of the design workshop time.  I would have used that time for more
workshops in line with our consensus training.

I think that because cohousing has been driven by mostly design and
development professionals, there's been extra emphasis on design at the
expense of group process.  I'd venture that if more time was spent on
training the soon-to-be-neighbors how to work with all of the new
relationship complexities and decision making, there would be more
harmony and less discord (power struggles) at move-in.

Please understand that I am eternally grateful to the fantastic work
that Chuck, Katie, Jim, Matt, Chris, and others have done for cohousing
and Heartwood.  I'd just like to see cohousing development evolve to
include a greater emphasis on developing relationships in addition to
developing real estate.

My 2¢ worth,
Mac

-- 
           Mac & Sandy Thomson           Heartwood Cohousing
           ganesh [at] rmi.net                Durango, Colorado
        Web Site:   http://www.heartwoodcohousing.com


Everything in excess!!  To enjoy the flavor of life, take big bites! 
Moderation is for monks.
           - Robert Heinlein
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