Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Re: BIG Co-housing. Who Loves It? Who Hates It?

[Lion Kuntz (lionkuntz]

Thanks, Diane, for your comments. I purposely did not want to
put a picture on any project and spoke of examples of Opera
Plaza and FrogSong instead.

I have indeed spent considerable thought on the issues you
brought up. I have a plan in mind which I would like to defer
describing until I feel the "initial feelings" about projects
outside the scale of present co-housing sizes have come in.

The web link you cited was for a very specific audience in 2003
holding an internet conference to continue the momentum of the
5th ECOCITY conference in 2002 in Szechen, China. There are
various entry doors to the website which may be more relevent to
people on this list, most of whom are not (it seems to me) in
big cities, and have other concerns.

You asked a lot of astute detailed questions. I would ask you to
bear with me in patience. I would rather not paint pictures in
peoples minds who might still be thinking of answering the
"bigness" question from their own perspective first. Unless I am
wrong the currents will move on to many other subjects of the
hour, and in a week or so I could address your questions at any
level of detail you prefer.

Thanks for taking the question seriously enough to google me and
find a weblink. The questions you showed concern about are
fairly universal and apply to all mixed-use multi-family
projects. I hope you will find my answers satisfactory. However,
locating potential problems I have not yet anticipated is even
more valuable to me. That's what I hope to learn from peoples
reactions to the thoughts of something bigger than they are used
to.

I could have used the Fox Plaza example instead of the Opera
Plaza building. That one is 11 stories of offices, topped by
another 11 stories of luxury condos, all of it on groundfloor
commercial space (previously department store, bank, post
office, office supply store). It's not anything I would like to
be a part of, or participate in, but the principle of largeness
and combined residential-public spaces is adequately proved.
Although it is a "city block", it is a smallish triangular block
that forced the developer to go high to maximize his interests.
It is about as opposite as I can think of to my concept.

I spent the summer of 1980 in Boston, but unfortunately can't
recall any prominent examples in your area to point to. My mind
was occupied on different thoughts in those days. If you can
think of any development with a web presence, which combines
about 100 families with  commercial ground floor on one city
block, I would appreciate the link.

Sincerely, Lion Kuntz
Sonoma County, California, USA



--- Dave and Diane <daveanddee [at] verizon.net> wrote:

> Hi Lionel and all the folks in coho-land,
> 
...

> --Diane Simpson
> MARKETING FACILITATOR
> JP COHOUSING  617-522-2209
> P.O. BOX 420 BOSTON MASSACHUSETTS
> HTTP://WWW.JPCOHOUSING.ORG
> 
> = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =



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