Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Common House Importance

[Sharon Villines (sharon]

> On Dec 6, 2023, at 10:23 AM, Ronald Bracy via Cohousing-L <cohousing-l [at] 
> cohousing.org> wrote:
> 
> Hi Cohousing-L,I wondering if you are part of a cohousing community without a 
> common house?  I am going through https://www.cohousing.org/directory and 
> noted places that do not have a common house listed.  My theory is that most 
> if not all cohousing communities are different than other intentional 
> communities because of their common house.

Ted Rau of SoFA has a new book that joins his Ph.D. in linguistics with his 
lived experience in cohousing and sociocracy. In one section he presents the 
concept of “common” in linguistics — a seemingly odd connection. But, I’ve 
found that definitions in seemingly unrelated fields provide a deeper 
understanding of words.

In this instance, for information to be recognized as information it has to be 
known by 2 or more parties and it also has to be known to be known. Information 
is of little utility if no one knows who knows and who doesn’t. Everyone has to 
know who knows — if not it is not information that a group holds in common.

The more knowledge, information, understanding, etc. everyone holds in common, 
the closer the community.

The common house is a place that everyone holds in common not just because they 
all own it, but because everyone knows who holds it in common. That allows 
everyone to be equally empowered in that space. 

We’ve come to think of the common house as having a broad range of amenities 
that people can share — kids room, exercise room, laundry, etc. — but the most 
important feature in terms of building a community is that the space is common 
to all members. Everyone is welcome and in that space everyone is equal. It is 
“our space.” The whole community can be together there.

The standard in Greek city planning centuries ago was that every neighborhood 
had to have a space that was large enough for everyone to congregate. It was 
usually a large plaza and often a large plaza next to a ball playing field. 
That’s where elections, celebrations, speeches, etc were held. (I suspect in 
some cases the ball field doubled as the commons.)

This is a centuries-old recognition that such space is fundamentally important 
for a community to exist. The town square, in other words, establishes the 
community by creating a commons, a center of government. It isn’t the building; 
it’s the place large enough for everyone to gather. 

All the facilities in the common house provide incentives to build it and 
attract people to the community, but they are not the fundamental importance of 
the space. 

Although with Zoom….

Collective Power: Patterns for a Self-Organized Future
https://amzn.to/481AUHi

Sharon
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Sharon Villines
Takoma Village Cohousing, Washington DC
http://www.takomavillage.org