Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: question about cohousing communities that have not made it

[David Oesper (davedarksky]

During the past year and a half, I have gotten nowhere trying to find a group 
of people interested in a cohousing community that is astronomy-friendly.

Challenges we face are many.

(1) Trying to build a core group when people are geographically dispersed, 
often don’t know each other, and have had little or no opportunity to meet each 
other in person
(2) Trying to interest people in creating a cohousing community outside of a 
city or town
(3) Trying to start a cohousing community in the desert southwest (NM, AZ, West 
TX)
(4) Adding a (strictly voluntary) public astronomy education component to the 
residential project 

We have formed an LLC to purchase land for the project, and though we have five 
members and a whopping $5K so far, only one couple (guess who?) is interested 
in cohousing.  Another couple wants an RV home base, and one single person 
would just like an occasional place to visit.

I have been active in astronomy all my adult life, but as I enter my 
semi-retirement years, I am considering just giving up on astronomy and moving 
to the city.  Why?  Better medical care, and I'd love to live near a symphony 
orchestra, chamber music, and faculty & student recitals.  But you’d be 
unlikely to ever see the Milky Way, meteor showers, etc. from such a place.  
Alas, too much light pollution almost everywhere these days, and it’s getting 
worse most places despite efforts to contain it.  Maybe it’s a lost cause.

Even putting astronomy and cohousing aside, how often do you find a rural 
housing development that isn’t subdivided into parcels with the homes widely 
dispersed?  If you’re going to live rurally (even just a little ways out of 
town), wouldn’t it make more sense to have a cluster of homes with a shared 
water supply, septic, etc. and most of the surrounding land left undeveloped?

David Oesper
Mirador Astronomy Village LLC
https://miradorastrovillage.org/ <https://miradorastrovillage.org/>