Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Urban cohousing: Common house on roof?

[Fred H Olson (fholson]

On Tue, 8 Jan 2008 katie-henry [at] att.net wrote about the viability of having
the only common space on the top level of a multi-story apartment style
building... ( I could not see an easy way to quote a few lines for
context...)

I think the common space on the top floor would be less than ideal.
Putting mailboxes there might
help get people in the habit of going "out of there way" to drop by the
common spaces but I'd only recommmend it if there was a strong concensus
desireabilty of "artificially" motivating themselves to do this.

My opinion comes from my long held opinion there is a trade-off between
optimum cohousing architecture and group commitment / intentionality. That
is if a group can only manage a suboptimal site but is highly committed
and organized, they can make it work.  At the other extreme, if a facility
that is optimal for cohousing but is occupied by people who are not
committed to cohousing goals, it could be just another community with
minimal interaction between neighbors.

Retrofit cohousing, that interests me, deals with this tradeoff.
>From my page http://mn.cohousing.org/retrofit/ :
 Retrofit  Cohousing is developed in existing housing by changing
 the way the occupants of that housing relate - usually with new occupants
 moving in to participate in the community.  Retrofiting the social
 relations and not necessarily the structures.

Since the my college dorm years ago I have not lived in a comparable
structure with an elevator (which I assume the building you describe would
have) but it seems like a challenge to get people to "go out of their way"
frequently which implies organized events only and minimal use. But not
impossible.  I wonder about a technical solution - suppose the elevator
automatically (and only without ringing an alarm for emergencies) go to
the common floor on the way to other floors (enen tho it is 'out of the
way" it would stop / open doors at the common level for a few seconds and
then proceed to the final destination floor.  I have no idea how possible
it would be to program this but it is theoretically possible.  Again the
group would have to support such a feature to make it work.

Fred

--
Fred H. Olson  Minneapolis,MN 55411  USA        (near north Mpls)
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