Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Neighborhood Cohousing

[Alison (acgaelen]

I really like the term neighborhood cohousing since it describes the idea of 
starting out with an existing neighborhood. The term might remain a little 
unclear because it doesn't include a "change" word, like "Neighborhood to 
Cohousing" or something more exciting. 

I live in Novato CA which is in Marin County where the land is too expensive to 
buy enough to build cohousing.  Novato is at the northern edge of the county 
and has several neighborhoods that might offer possibilities.  I would love to 
learn more about neighborhood cohousing and how to find others who want to buy 
into neighborhood cohousing.  Thanks for the discussion. 
Alison Clayton

> On Dec 8, 2013, at 3:16 AM, cohousing-l-request [at] cohousing.org wrote:
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> Today's Topics:
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>   1. "Neighborhood" Cohousing or "Retrofit" Cohousing (Kevin Wolf)
> 
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> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> 
> Message: 1
> Date: Sun, 8 Dec 2013 08:57:30 +0000
> From: Kevin Wolf <kevin [at] wolfandassociates.com>
> Subject: [C-L]_ "Neighborhood" Cohousing or "Retrofit" Cohousing
> To: Cohousing-L <cohousing-l [at] cohousing.org>
> Cc: Mark Westcombe <m.westcombe [at] lancaster.ac.uk>,    Jo Gooding
>    <jo [at] cohousing.org.uk>
> Message-ID:
>    <CANEXY91tUzqTcAS-V_=wBtgZy6HXYi53WonW1p_TQEvMm249dw [at] mail.gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
> 
> Hi Cohousing Activists,
> 
> I just finished speaking at the UK Cohousing Network's special conference
> on Retrofit Cohousing.  They invited me because N Street Cohousing is a
> premier example of how existing homes can be converted over time into a
> vibrant cohousing community.  We have grown to 20+ houses and around 60
> adults in the 25 years we have considered ourselves a cohousing community.
> 
> One thing that came out of this excellent event is the awareness that there
> are problems with the word "retrofit" to describe what N Street and other
> similar types of communities are doing.  We found out that people did not
> attend because they thought it was about retrofiting existing buildings
> into built choosing, similar to Doyle Street and Swans Market Cohousing
> here in CA.
> 
> The word retrofit also doesn't describe the many ways in which "non built"
> cohousing can develop and evolve.  "Built" cohousing is defined as all the
> units coming on line more or less at the same time as one project.
> 
> One of the speakers at the UK conference described her group's effort to
> buy homes in an inexpensive neighbourhood near Cardiff and evolve that into
> cohousing in the years to come. Few of the members would have contiguous
> homes. They'd like to buy a home near the entrance to the neighbourhood and
> convert it into a common house with possible use as a cafe during the day
> to help pay for it. It might also be rented out for non members to use as
> well.  It is a different strategy to achieve the same goals as all of us
> want to achieve in our cohousing communities.  In my opinion, the goals we
> are pursuing are more important than the specific means by which we achieve
> them, and the core elements of a cohousing community are a common house and
> the gifting of our time cooking meals for each other.
> 
> So after the conference a few of us met for dinner and came up with a new
> proposed word to describe the type of cohousing the grows over time and is
> not built all at once - Neighborhood Cohousing.    We considered words like
> Evolving Cohousing or   Starting Small Cohousing but like the robustness of
> the word Neighborhood and all the potential in it.
> 
> By the way, N Street member houses have been spreading out over our
> neighborhood with five of them no longer being contiguous and one of them
> at least a block away, and a long time Friend of the Community (one of our
> FOCers) lives a few blocks away.
> 
> We'd like to spark a discussion with the U.S cohousing community on whether
> we should change from the word Retrofit to Neighborhood or another word to
> define N Street types of cohousing from communities as being different from
> cohousing communities that are built all at once from retrofitted old
> buildings.
> 
> Thank you for weighing in.
> 
> Kevin
> N Street Cohousing co-founder
> 
> 
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> End of Cohousing-L Digest, Vol 119, Issue 4
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