Cohousing-L Mailing List: RE: Urban/Suburban/Rural decision at start?

[Dave Ritchie (DRitchie]

> My question is this - in the experience of those who have 
> gone down this 
> road before, how important is it for a cohousing group to 
> clarify early 
> where it wants to search for land (urban, suburban, rural)?  Or is it 
> important at all?

        Buzz,

        My cohousing group had a similar split when we started looking for
land.  We took a map of Massachusetts with all of the towns outlined on it 
and had all the members mark the towns from Green for "I want to live in
this town" through Red for "I will quit the project before living in this 
town".

        This got us only a very few towns that were all Green or Blue.  That's 
where we started our land search.  We had a fairly wide area where, while not
everyone liked the towns, we wouldn't lose anyone if we built there.  That was 
our backup in case we didn't find anything in our preferred towns.

        I suspect that if you do a similar map exercise you'll quickly find if 
you have some overlap to use as a starting point or if you have two "islands"
such that half the group is going to be unhappy no matter where you end up.
In our case the urban/rural split was not extreme: from the most urban towns 
being Waltham and Newton to the most rural being Bolton and Hudson.

        After looking unsuccessfully at a dozen sites, the bar for what is 
acceptable might creep a bit lower. 

        Good luck in your search!

        Dave