Cities and towns across America suffer from too few new houses being built in or around the core of town, and far too many built three traffic jams away from downtown. If the economic stimulus efforts facilitate new housing construction, let’s make sure that it doesn’t result in more costly, low density sprawl. If used inappropriately the economic stimulus efforts will simply add to the long-term problems of our cities and towns. At its best this effort will realize this opportunity to address several key planning and development issues at the same time, including:
- Land use and development;
- Public transportation; and,
- Infrastructure.
Actually, land use, transportation, infrastructure and development are one and the same. To get public transportation to work we need to infill, or “refill”, our existing cities and end sprawl. Sprawl devalues our landscape and environment like no other activity we engage in. It’s worse than mining; it’s worse than factories; it’s even worse than logging. Living in towns and cities with appropriately scaled houses (perhaps nothing over four stories); retail, services and employment opportunities; natural open space (allowing for drainage and run-off); conveniently located parks for children and older folks; places for neighbors to meet, play volleyball, play chess; and neighborhood design that allows citizens to connect to others, forming a community and being a part of something more than their own individual houses.
We need to better use our existing infrastructure by building where roads already are, where water and sewers already are, and where we can enhance the probability for future public transportation. We must stop building on irreplaceable farmland. We must reduce driving distances and stop paving over acres of land per house for new roads.
But building new houses in town is much harder than building outside of town. The two major hurdles of building in town are:
As an architect, project manager, and co-developer, I have found only one consistent means to overcome these two hurdles – and that is by designing and building cohousing communities. Co-housing communities are redevelopment schemes that are designed to evolve into socially and environmentally sustainable communities.
What are Cohousing Communities?
Cohousing communities, despite their peculiar, or perhaps “unfamiliar” name, are nothing new. They are simply families and singles, elderly and young people, a cross section of the population who are in fact quite conservative about what they think a neighborhood is. They believe that a neighborhood is a place where you can easily walk to your neighbor’s house, you know all of your neighbors, and while you have your own house of course, you also have a neighborhood place that kids can walk to and play with others and where you can share a meal with your neighbors on occasion. And you might have other common facilities that make your life easier, more practical (a shared workshop, for instance), and more fun (you have a place where you can have a neighborhood dance), as the future neighbors decide for themselves
Developers usually like building in the sticks because there is no one there to object. As soon as you try to build where there are neighbors, they will find reasons to object to what you are doing, usually couched in potential traffic and parking problems. But generally it’s the fear of change that is the real problem. When the new cohousing development is out of town and citizens don’t see it (despite the real effects of more driving, more traffic, and more pollution), they don’t seem to object to it. It’s a temporary case of “out of sight, out of mind”.
We have been involved in over 50 cohousing developments in North America now. Only two of them have been stopped by neighbors, although on average neighbors stop almost half of other types of proposed infill projects. The difference between the two takes place at the public podium. Future cohousing residents themselves make the best case for why they should be able to build their cohousing project and join the community. They talk of being able to walk to school, walk to work, or using public transportation. They talk about car-sharing and carpooling and driving less. Residents from nearby cohousing communities also tell their personal stories and experiences. One resident with four children talks about how he previously needed to plan two to four play dates a weekend, in the last two years of living in a cohousing community hasn’t needed to plan one.
The neighbors and city officials get to know cohousers as real people, not just their driving habits and the color of their car. It’s easy to say no to a developer, with his white shoes, white belt and slick story, but it’s very difficult to say no to a young mother discretely nursing an infant to keep him from fussing as she takes her turn at the podium to tell her story.
We had one of our recent projects fully approved in nine months, while three developments previously proposed on that infill site had been soundly rejected by neighbors and town officials. One rejected proposal was a subdivision of single-family houses, similar in size to those of the opposing neighbors.
Our new infill cohousing community was approved in eight months. Meanwhile three new residential projects that now surround the cohousing site took 5 to 7 years to get approved. These projects morphed several times, and once everyone was exhausted by the protracted public battle, they let very unattractive projects get built. In contrast, cohousing communities have won a wide range of prominent architectural design awards.
Security
Most people are leery of marginally safe inner-city neighborhoods, and that is understandable. But I have seen over and over again that people who build their own (use other word than “custom”) neighborhood to reflect their specific needs, and move into it at the same time as 30 or 50 other people, feel nowhere near as threatened as if they were to move into the same neighborhood on their own. We moved from an old bucolic Berkeley neighborhood to the rough and tumble, formerly industrial center of Emeryville. This was at a time when few residences existed in the area. Those that did had barred windows or were more safely located on the second floor (with the downstairs devoted to storing autos). One residence on the street graffited itself “Fort Apache” to note to would-be intruders: “bother us at your own risk.”
Katie, our one-year old daughter and I moved to Emeryville in 1991 when this under-developed donut hole of the Oakland-Berkeley area had only 2,100 people. We never would have moved there without the comfort, sense of community and support cohousing provided.
Today, there are almost 10,000 people living in Emeryville cohousing. Nora Davis, the then Mayor, is still the Mayor 17 years later. Mayor Davis continually credits the cohousing community as having a significant, catalyst role in the turnaround of Emeryville. Jerry Carnillia, still a neighbor on the street, says that before the cohousing community was built, and given the hidden nature of the street, someone dumped a pickup load of garbage on the street just about every week. Since the cohousers moved in, it’s only happened one time.
Cohousing projects are approved more easily because, not only do the future residents win over the officials, they also win over their future neighbors in the larger community. Often, and before it’s all said and done, area residents come to testify on the project’s behalf. Not only does the public now know them as Ms. Carsten, who is the librarian at the local high school, and Mr. Moore, a local firefighter – they also can now see that they are planning a great project. They bring security to a neighborhood that was tenuous, uneven, and that really could use a positive shot in the arm. For the people moving into cohousing, the move brings them closer to jobs, and culture, and it means a lot less driving. Cohousing can be the catalyst for building and rebuilding neighborhoods and communities.
Cohousing achieves several goals that are important to growing and maintaining a sustainable living environment: cohousing projects are often stitched into an existing community through infill development or rehabilitation of existing buildings, thereby limiting additional sprawl and greenfield development. Cohousing brings socially and economically diverse residents to a downtown where they can benefit from proximity to services, employment opportunities, recreational facilities and public transportation. They become an active part of a neighborhood’s street life. And finally, cohousing provides opportunities for collaboration and a localized lifestyle that binds a community through social, economic, safety and environmental benefits.
For more information on how to plan a new cohousing project in your town, please contact:
Charles Durrett, McCamant & Durrett Architects:
Email: charles.durrett@cohousingco.com
Website: www.cohousingco.com
Publications:
Kathryn McCamant and Charles Durrett. Cohousing. A Contemporary Approach to Housing Ourselves. Berkeley, CA: Ten Speed Press, 1994 (2nd edition).
Charles, Durrett. Senior Cohousing. A Community Approach to Independent Living. Berkeley, CA: Habitat Press, 2005.
