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

[dwoodard (dwoodard]

Lion, I've read that some apartment buildings in Sweden have been
converted to cohousing. I have no idea how they did it or how successful
the projects were, but I suspect that you would be well advised to find
out.

Doug Woodard
St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada


On Sun, 26 Mar 2006, Lion Kuntz wrote:

> 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