About Earthsong

Cohousing

Cohousing is the term coined by two American architects, Kathryn McCamant and Charles Durrett, to describe a housing arrangement developed in Denmark over the last 30 years, and now adopted increasingly throughout Europe and North America.

Developed and managed by the residents themselves, it combines the autonomy of private dwellings with the advantages of community living. Although individual dwellings are designed to be self-contained—each having its own kitchen, bathroom and living areas—the extensive common facilities and in particular optional commonhouse dinners are valued features of cohousing.

Cars are kept at the edge of the site to create a pedestrian friendly area designed for casual interaction and safe play for children.

In America 50 cohousing projects have been completed and there are 150 projects in the planning stage. Nearer to home in Austrlia we have Cascade Cohousing in Hobart, Tasmania, and Pinakarri in Perth WA.

The six principles

Cohousing is a form of cooperative or semi-collective housing. They typically comprise 20-30 clustered townhouses.

"In addition to a clear common denominator of people joining together intent on cooperation as a means of improving their lives, Katie [McCamant] and Chuck [Durrett] offer six defining characteristics of a cohousing community:

• Participatory Process. Members organise and participate in the planning and design process for the housing development, and are responsible as a group for all the final decisions either with or without a separate developer.
• Intentional neighbourhood design. The physical design encourages a strong sense of community and increases the possibilities for spontaneous social contact.
• Private Homes Supplemented by extensive common facilities. Each household has a complete private residence but has access to common areas and facilities, which are integrally designed for daily use to supplement private living areas, including a large common house.
• Complete resident management. Residents manage the development, making decisions of common concern at community meetings using inclusive, participatory decision making processes.
• Nonhierarchical Structure. While there are leadership roles, the responsibility for the decisions is shared by the community's adults and no one persons dominates the decisions or the community process.
• Separate income sources. Households are responsible for there own income and finances and do not rely on the community for their primary income", McIntyre (2000:26).

In Denmark these communities are known as bofaellesskaber—which translates variously as living communities or living together. It is estimated that over 300 such cohousing communities have been built in Denmark since 1970.

It appears bofaellesskaber was initially a response to the new challenges of rising costs, double incomes, juggling children and meal preparation, divorce, and growing isolation. Danish cohousing neighbourhoods arose mainly "to create a strong social network for the nuclear family" (Fromm 1991:19). In this sense it was initially a very middle class phenomenon. Its early pioneers could afford expensive houses yet instead chose smaller clustered ones, assumed the risks, and spent their time developing a cohousing community.

In the US and Canada over one hundred groups formed in the last decade, interested in the ideas described by McCamant and Durrett. By 1996 25 neighbourhoods had been constructed, and by 2000 40 projects had been completed. These early projects were predominantly marketed, financed, and developed by the resident groups themselves because often only they were willing to invest and risk the time and money in the new idea. Projects also have been built in Australia, and the UK, and many more are under construction including those in NZ.

In the process cohousing appears to have given a measure of respectability to the intentional community movement. Indeed cohousing communities are often criticised as being communes for the middle class. Banks funding, by nature conservative, is a facility few "hippie communes" ever enjoyed, but routinely offered to cohousing projects today. Favourable media exposure seems to be the norm too.

It is quite possible that increasing legitimacy for community is the beginnings of an important personal and cultural paradigm shift.

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