Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: cars

[Lynn Nadeau (welcome]

RoseWind Cohousing is a built community, up and running for quite a few 
years now. It's a "lot-development" model, where people built their 
individual homes of diverse designs. Here's input on some recent discussion 
on garages and on near vs farther parking places. 

Garages: There is no prohibition on building a garage, and no one chose to 
attach a garage or carport to their home: our cars all live outdoors. (And 
we are in the Northwest, where we don't have either baking sun or snow.) 

Access: While acknowledging the benefits of perimeter parking lots, I can 
also note that driving to your home needn't spell the end of community. 
Because of fire codes and other site constraints, each of our 23 RoseWind 
homes can be driven to, typically at the back or side, relative to the 
central commons, which has no roads across it. There is parking for at least 
one car at each home site. Because we ARE in community, noticing what car is 
in your neighbor's driveway is just one more social signal: "Oh, they are 
home! I'll go talk to them" "They have company: I'll visit them later." 
"Nobody home, I'll leave a phone message." Or in my case: "The electric car 
is home, I can probably borrow it." 

There is much to learn from other communities -- part of the excellent value 
of this list -- and there is NO ONE WAY to do things that works! 

Lynn Nadeau, RoseWind Cohousing, Port Townsend WA
and
PT EcoVillage, in design phase (where we are looking at ways to limit number 
and use of cars, and share as much as possible in ownership, and will likely 
have only temporary vehicle access to residences, with perimeter parking the 
norm.)