CO-HOUSING
TO
CO-MMUNITY
TOM BENDER
November 1993
Our living
patterns have altered dramatically from the multi-generational family to
the nuclear family to the sometimes wonderful, sometimes desperate fragmented
hodge-podge pattern of lives and relationships apparent everywhere today.
Our present urban patterns do little to provide the support, help, and meaning
for lives that are often often struggling alone with the web of time, role,
financial and emotional entangle ments that overfill our days.
One of the first attempts to generate new alternatives in living patterns
has been the Scandinavian co-housing movement. In co-housing, individual
living units are downsized and shared facilities built. A "Commons"
containing shared dining facilities, lounge, library, laundry, childcare,
workshops, gardens, or other facilities allow access to such re sources
with less cost to individuals.
Frequently residents take a part of their meals in the commons, and rotate
the chores of cooking and cleanup. The community reward (and cost) is that
the time shared with neighbors in such shared activities as well as the
administration of the cooperative brings new friendships as well as a release
of time in which to develop and enjoy them.
For many people, however, this may not be an appropriate living pattern.
We may wish for an alternative to the food being offered at certain meals,
but not feel like cooking. We may not want constant intimacy with some of
the neighbors. We may be too solitary or to gregarious for those around
us. We may wish a wider community or not want the time-consuming work of
large-group decisionmaking.
What co-housing has most importantly achieved is to acknowledge the absence
of neighborhood in our communities, and to intentionally seek to
recreate its benefits within an area under control of its residents. The
successes of co-housing projects should alert us to the needs and opportunities
for a richer and less prescriptive sense of neighborhood wherever we live.
A neighborhood can provide a variety of simple and inexpensive "eating-out"
options as well as more elegant ones. It can provide a richer variety of
housing options and community services than can a co-housing project. Most
importantly, in the pattern it provides for public and community services,
it can generate greater and more varied opportunities for fellowship, service,
making friends, obtaining help, and celebrating the richness of our lives.
The spirit of our community facilities, and the patterns of how we interconnect
them, can in itself give much to the creation of community, to the generation
of good health, friendships, and a healthy human dimension to our lives.
The post office in our neighboring village was for many years in a small
storefront. Next to it and almost sharing an entrance, was a small cafe.
The town had no door to door mail delivery. As the mail was posted just
about coffee-break time every morning, an interesting community dynamic
developed. During the long rainy winter, people would come to the cafe for
a good morning warm-up and hello with their neighbors. They'd go next door,
pick up their mail, and return to their coffee cup to peruse it. News was
shared, problems discussed, advice given - often more than needed!
In addition to a counter and small tables, the cafe had one very large round
table in the middle, seating from six to a dozen or more depending on who
dropped in and pulled up another chair. The "Round Table" became
a heart of the community. Any stranger who sat down and joined it immediately
became subject and part of conversation, and left no longer apart from the
community.
This kind of subtle but important linkage can play a vital role. If the
elements of our everyday needs are served in a way that nudges us into opportunities
to connect comfortably with other people, they can do more than just their
primary and obvious functions.
Food shopping, getting a newspaper or magazine, picking up a book, or a
video, doing laundry, getting a haircut....there are many everyday acts
that can be linked with a comfortable place to sit and catch our breath
and relax. When there is a tradition or configuration which encourages sharing
tables, conversations spring up, acquaintances and friends are made, community
is born.
Bars, pubs, and tearooms once filled part of this community function. But
they often have an atmosphere, behavior, committment to stop, or purposefulness
which does not attract and evoke the kinds of opportunities and connections
we want.
"Eating out" can be an important element of community. Like the
co-housing shared meals, it can be a savings of time, energy, and committment
to meak preparation. It can be, with the proper eatery design, a wonderful
meeting place for people of all ages, of similar interests and values, or
of diverse and foreign ways of life. It can be a place of convenience and
speed, or of lingering to savor food, place, community, friendship, advice,
and just people.
A community has to acknowledge that there are mental and spiritual dimensions
to our health and well-being as well as physical ones, and that most of
our worst diseases today - from crime to child abuse to drugs - are diseases
of the spirit, not of the body. Because they arise out of lack of self-esteem,
mutual respect, and of being of value to our families and communities, their
healing involves both activities and environments which nurture and restore
those vital dimensions of health. Our neighborhoods need to nurture community
health as well as individual, spiritual health as well as physical.
We need within our neighborhoods access to nature, solitude, and physical
exercise within convenient walking distances of our homes. We need similar
access to spiritual touch stones for nurture of our inner balance and serenity,
as well as access to community itself. We need to rediscover what our lives
can give to others and the value of that to the giver, the receiver, and
the community.
We need places to shop where we are greeted with a smile of recognition
and connection with the lives of our community. We need living places for
the old and infirm close to shopping and where people can easily drop by
for a chat or to help out for a few minutes.
Co-housing has demonstrated what is missing in our neighborhoods, and the
will of people to regain it. It's time to put together what is needed for
real neighborhoods, where we can become and enjoy the value of community.
TOM BENDER
38755 Reed Rd.
Nehalem OR 97131 USA
503-368-6294
© November 1993
tbender@nehalemtel.net