Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: chickens in cohousing

[Craig Ragland (craigragland]

Swans Market is very urban  - my stays at Swans really helped me understand
the impact of different densities and the local environment.

Until I jumping into Coho/US a few years back, my cohousing experience was
entirely in the greater Seattle area, e.g. Winslow, Sharingwood, Puget
Ridge, Bellingham, etc. Cohousing in the Puget Sound is not typical - our
communities do not map well to the broader, national distribution - as far
as density of units/acre or type of broader neighborhood. There are many
other differences, which some of you will witness first-hand at the 2009
Natl Conference.

In the recent 2008 Cohousing Census, Betsy Morris found this self-reported
distribution (for 109 Cohousing Communities):

40% Urban
22% Small Town
21% Rural
17% Suburban

If you are like me, you probably see "cohousing" through your own
experience-colored glasses. If I had read Bonnie's post a few years ago, I
would have thought my community (Songaia: 38 people in 15 homes on 11 acres)
was more typical than Swans. Well, it turns out that those of us in the
suburbs are among the smallest number of cohousing communities. My
experience is that different cohousing communities have quite different
amounts of space (both shared and semi-private) for both our people and our
pets - for there is great diversity in cohousing - we include both very high
and very low density sites.

For more census info, see the Downloadable PDF in the Members Area Research
resources section:

http://www.cohousing.org/ma/research/resources

(please note: You need to be logged in as a Member to access this file, but
it's free)

On Tue, Jul 8, 2008 at 12:13 PM, Bonnie Fergusson <fergyb2 [at] yahoo.com> 
wrote:

>
> ---seriously clipped---

>
> Obviously this issue would probably be less intense with more common and/or
> private space and more distance between them--which on the other hand is the
> opposite of what most cohousing design is about.

-- 
Craig Ragland

Coho/US executive director
http://www.cohousing.org
craig [at] cohousing.org

Please try email first, include your phone number (w/time zone) - or give me
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