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Alright, you tried living in a commune in the 1970s, and people kept borrowing your toothbrush and leaving dishes in the sink. Then you set up house by yourself and felt lonely. You got married, started raising a family and ended up feeling isolated from your friends and the rest of the community. You go to work, wave to your neighbors over the fence now and then, and think there must be more to life than this. There is: a whole new concept of building a neighborhood and sense of community. This is the story of how and why cohousing works, and how to go about making it happen for yourself.
From The WomanSource Catalog & Review: Tools for Connecting the Community for Women; review by Ilene Rosoff
Does the idea of not having to cook meals for yourself or family every night, deal with traffic on your block, or worry when your children are out playing in the neighborhood appeal to you? If the answer is yes, you may want to consider exploring cohousing, a concept that originated in Denmark in the early 1970s and has spread throughout Europe. In Cohousing, a number of European cohousing communities are profiled. Although each community is a unique reflection of its members' tastes and desires, there are some common components, such as parking lots on the perimeters of the community for pedestrian safety, a common house where meals can be shared, and recreational facilities housing various community activities and services. With all the responsibilities entailed in managing a home and/or a family, cohousing is a solution for finding sufficient time to relax and spend with the people who are important to us. (The authors have recently started The Cohousing Company, a design and development company formed specifically to assist groups interested in planning and implementing cohousing in this country.)
