Cohousing-L Mailing List: The dissolving of community, building realionships

[Rob Sandelin (floriferous]

 There are hundreds and hundreds of failed intentional communities, in fact
community failure dwarfs community success.  You can count the number of
intentional communities that have existed for more than 20 years pretty
quickly, there are not many of them.  So an interesting question I have long
pondered is why do some communities last and others fail?  Are their
patterns?  Over the years, at many NICA gatherings and other community
gatherings this question has been discussed.  It is my take away from these
discussions is that the key appears to be......relationships.  Those
communities which invest time and energy into creating and crafting strong
relationships and bonds between members seem to last long and also be highly
desirable places to live. Those communities where relationship fail to
develop well seem to peter out, people move away and they eventually end as
communities and become real estate again. In the world of cohousing, I think
at times that the real estate development can get out of balance with the
relationship building. I have experienced more than a few difficult
community sessions where peoples angst about their real estate dwarfed their
commitment or even desires to have relationships with their neighbors, which
presumably is why they invested their time and money into in the project in
the first place.  

So what are the things your community does to build relationships?  I would
find that an interesting topic for this list.  It might be especially
interesting to hear about relationship building work during real estate
development. What did you do to reach out and care about each other? To
build the connections and bonds?  


Rob Sandelin
Sharingwood Community
Naturalist, Writer
The Environmental Science School
http://www.nonprofitpages.com/nica/SVE.htm
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