Retrocohouse

Olson's description of retrofit co-housing, entitled Building an Urban Village has some key elements of the idea.

Outline

"Dozens of groups of people around the U.S. and elsewhere are trying to build a very strong sense of community amongst the 15-40 households that they live near to include such things as:

1. Common activities like shared evening meals several nights per week (cooking rotated with 40-80% participation) and, of course, the meetings (see 3)
2. Extensive shared use of:
   1. some common indoor space (common kitchen and dining space, workshops or anything the group chooses)
   2. outdoor space (gardens, paths, play structures)
   3. equipment (lawn mowers, laundry facilities, tools, computers)
3. Group organization that decides how the group will relate and what and how they will share.
4. Typically such things as more childcare exchanges, more friendships and mutual concern (e.g. "favors" for an ill neighbor) also result.

Examples of retrofit co-housing

N Street in Davis, California, is unusual because -

"it has arisen by gradual evolution in the midst of existing suburban development. As of February 2001, we have grown to 16 houses by a process of adding one house at a time as they became available. We have taken down the fences between 14 houses and integrated the backyard landscaping."

The layout of the site gives a good feel for how much shared space has been gained through this gradual process.

A masters thesis comparing two retrofit co-housing developments

This has some very interesting stuff in it.

Retrofit - can work around already existing units and residents

"Over time as properties come up for sale, new people who want to participate in retrofit cohousing would buy them and move to a selected block. And of course, some people who already live on the block may choose to join. Some groups are oriented primarily toward developing a community incorporating current residents. Let me emphasize that no one who does not choose to participate would be forced to move or change. They would simply have neighbors who were as a group doing planning and something special."

Macro-housing?

What this implies is that you can actually apply retrofit co-housing to quite a spatially large area. I'm thinking here of my own locality, where there will soon be three very near houses, all able to carry out at least some aspects of co-housing. The principles are the same - but it's not quite co-housing. It's something on a larger scale.

Name? possibly macro-housing: applying the principles of co-housing to an area defined by a reasonable walking distance, i.e. you can pop around for tea.

This would mean also that macro-housing work could be done in venn-diagram-like stages. However, it should have written into it somewhere that attempts are made to break out of cultural silos.

Physical structure or social relations?

Olson again:

"There is ongoing debate whether the success of a cohousing community is attributable to the physical embodiment of the community or to the way community members relate and organize themselves. Some feel such things as community layout, architecture, density, parking arrangements etc. etc. are primary to the success of a cohousing community. Some argue that the group development is primary, or even solely responsible. It seems to me that both contribute and affect the development of a cohousing community. In this light I would expect that a retrofit cohousing community to be less successful in some dimensions. For example, there may be fewer spontaneous interactions because the site design does not promote them as much as in a new construction cohousing community. However, N Street Cohousing Community has demonstrated that retrofit cohousing community can be successful.

"The timeline is clearly stretched out with retrofit cohousing (evolutionary); it may take a decade to have enough participating households to afford a dedicated common house for example. And the timeline is not likely to be known in advance. This makes the always difficult development stage more uncertain and meeting logistics for off-site members (those not yet moved in) more complicated. Indeed the number of offsite members and the length of time they could be in this status could both be more problematic. And peoples lives don't stand still while the community develops. Therefore it is likely that the group will evolve significantly over the development decade."