Cohousing-L Mailing List: RE: Do cohousers care about "bricks and sticks"?

[Rob Sandelin (floriferous]

I can show you a condo in Bellevue WA that has a brilliant cohousing design,
pedestrian core, play area, nice community center that is central and easy
to look into from almost every unit. It even has a nice kitchen, although
not industrial grade.  It has very little community. The neighbors are
pretty much still strangers, some after 5 years. It is nothing like a
cohousing community in terms of relationships. I asked my guide there if she
felt comfortable asking to borrow a car. She looked at me like I was from
Mars. There is nothing there but the typical condo.

 So sorry, I do not believe in bricks and sticks having much to do with
community. Its not the architecture, its the people and their desires and
intentions that make cohousing what it is, a community by intention.  There
are hundreds of Intentional communities that are not cohousing,that have
good relationships and totally isolating architecture. If architecture
really was the key why do those places work? Because it is the intentions of
the people do have those relationships. Take away that intention for
relationship from cohousing, and all you have left is a condo. In fact, at
least one cohousing group, common ground in Aspen, lost its intention and
became just another condo. There are a couple other cohousing groups which
have large percentage of the people who live there not involved, apparently
uninterested in community. They just want a  safe, cheap place to live. It
will interesting to see if those cohousing groups also don't just end up as
condos.

Rob Sandelin

-----Original Message-----
From: cohousing-l-admin [at] cohousing.org
[mailto:cohousing-l-admin [at] cohousing.org]On Behalf Of Sharon Villines
Sent: Friday, November 22, 2002 8:36 AM
To: cohousing-l [at] cohousing.org
Subject: Re: [C-L]_Do cohousers care about "bricks and sticks"?


On 11/20/02 2:12 PM, "Howard Landman" <howard [at] polyamory.org> wrote:

> I believe that the design of the community can have an immense
> impact on the day-to-day functioning of it.  Even something as simple as
> having the common house in the middle versus on one end can make a huge
> difference.

The bricks and sticks are important as long as they are related to a deeper
value, building economically, socially, and ecologically sustainable
communities. Intelligent investment in our personal spaces is a very
fundamental way of putting our money (time and thought) where our mouth is.
Along with our hearts and feet.

The bricks and sticks are one of the unique and defining characteristics of
cohousing.

Sharon
--
Sharon Villines
Takoma Village Cohousing, Washington DC
http://www.takomavillage.org

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