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A discussion of alternative communities must start with a definition
of "an alternative to what?" We are looking at alternatives
to the single detached family home or apartment, at considerable
distance from where people work and mostly served by highway strip
commercial and mall development. This most common form of American
and Canadian housing has spread across the land in the last fifty
years. The land use result has been sprawl; the social result
has been isolation from a community of people. The discussion
below describes several alternatives to common practices, but
there are many variations to be discovered and explored.
Village Homes in Davis, California, is a classic alternative
housing model. The village was intended to provide aggressive
energy conservation with solar energy using residential clusters
interspersed with commercial, agricultural, and common area uses.
Its features include narrow streets to discourage automobile traffic,
pedestrian paths and areas, house orientation to take advantage
of solar exposure, a high level of edible landscape, and natural
drainage and retention systems. (In Context #35, pg. 33-34.) Village
Homes, while innovative, maintains many of the characteristics
of more typical suburban neighborhoods.
Cohousing is a more extreme alternative. This model has
self-contained, individually owned, houses on small allotments
with common areas containing shared facilities such as the kitchen,
laundry and children's play areas. Land, except for a small courtyard
with each house, is usually in common title. (Permaculture International
Journal, #46, pg. 14)
According to the PIJ article by Michael Petter, features that
might be found in cohousing include:
In cohousing, participation in the life of the community is what
attracts people. The design attempts to create an atmosphere where
people know each other and provide a secure and stimulating environment.
The N Street project in Davis, California has put together
twelve older homes and apartment buildings that now share a common
back yard, gardens, and a common house with a large kitchen, dining
room and office. This project was developed in an older neighborhood,
by accretion, as adjacent homes came into membership and fences
were torn down to be replaced by open space and community gardens.
It is a useful model for revitalization of inner city areas.
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According to a founding member the community aspires to be '... a little chaotic, definitely diverse, yet in a wild and living harmony; a place of awe, of work, of belonging, of growth, of spirituality; a place in which to be born; a neighborhood in which to grow old and die; a community to know as home". (Whole Earth Review, Fall 1995, pg. 42) Reference: Norwood, Ken. 1995. Rebuilding Community in America. Shared Living Resource Center, 2375 Shattuck Avenue, Berkeley, CA 94704.
