Cohousing-L Mailing List: RE: Lot development model cohousing [was: More affordable housing ideas

[Rob Sandelin (floriferous]

What was referenced was Puget Ridge, which is very dense (typical of Urban
projects on small sites) and has a pedestrian walkway being faced on both
ends by houses, about 15 feet apart. This is very common for capital project
model developments in urban areas.  A lot development has homes on
individually owned lots. Our houses all face a street or walkway at
Sharingwood, but we have no houses which face across from each other. Side
to side many houses are 15 feet or so apart. One of the things I really find
frustrating about email is you can't easily sketch pictures. What is
described can be sketched on a napkin in 2 seconds. The Urban street model
looks sort like this:

x  x   x  x
             X
x  x   x   x

Where homes are lined up across from each other, each looking into a shared
walkway. This is a very typical urban design which utilitizes limited land
really well. It would be totally possible to design a lot model like this, I
just don't know of any that have. When you are rural and have 40, 60, 160
acres, people tend to look at arranging the homes a bit less densely. Also
when you build individual homes, people seem to want more yardspace.

Again, the point of bringing this up was flexibility in housing options.
When you do lots, you can have lots of variety: shacks, yurts, owner-built
which are all ways to do things cheaply. Somebody sent me an example where a
community was going to do both. I wonder what the banks think of letting
people hand built custom 200 sq. foot shacks? Yurts? All too often, banks
control development options, and do so to "protect" their investments. Would
having a shack hurt the property value of the financed property, thus the
bank intervening? I don't know, I really wish we could find a small handful
of national lenders who weren't so stuffy about things like composting
toilets, alternative construction, etc.

As in natural systems, having a wide diversity of structures and types and
models I think adds strength and resilience to the overall system. There are
lots of people who would never want to live out in the dark woods of
Sharingwood, just as their are lots of people who would not want to live so
"dense". We just had some visitors the other day who had given up on
cohousing because, according to them, there was not enough physical privacy
to be comfortable. They were surprised to learn that places like Sharingwood
existed.

Rob

-----Original Message-----
From: cohousing-l-admin [at] cohousing.org
[mailto:cohousing-l-admin [at] cohousing.org]On Behalf Of Jeff Zucker
Sent: Wednesday, April 10, 2002 8:51 AM
To: cohousing-l [at] cohousing.org
Subject: Re: [C-L]_Lot development model cohousing [was: More affordable
housing ideas


Rob Sandelin wrote:

> What you call cozy, some would call crowded. No, I have not yet seen a lot
> development model which does the street notion, with houses facing across
a
> street from each other. At Sharingwood, our pedestrian area is a loop,
with
> a large garden in the center which all the homes face into. The sort of
> dense, Urban crowding models promoted by the Cohousing Company tend not to
> be used in rural settings, where lot development is more likely to occur.
> One reason is perhaps because of zoning issues. We hired the Cohousing
> Company to help us with our pedestrian design, but the community rejected
> their street proposal, it didn't fit the rural nature of our community.
> Perhaps some other lot development group has done this?
>
> Rob Sandelin
> Sharingwood  www.sharingwood.org
>
>

Rob,
    You may recall Manzanita Village from your visit over a year ago.  Does
this fit into the catagory of a lot development model with houses facing the
street?  You can look at our site plan and other information at
www.manzanitavillage.com


--
Jeffrey L. Zucker   A.I.A.
Zucker/Ackerman - Architecture
282 Jacob Lane
Prescott Az.  86303
jeffreyz [at] cableone.net
(928)  445-8531


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