BEDP EnvironmEnt DEsign guiDE February 2008 • DES 17 • Summary COHOUSING – AN INTRODUCTION TO A RESIDENTIAL ALTERNATIVE Greg Bamford Summary of Actions Towards Sustainable Outcomes Environmental Issues/Principal Impacts • he conventional mores of neighbouring combined with the absence of usable common space in most people’s immediate neighbourhoods constrains the opportunities for social interaction with neighbours, much less any collective action towards more sustainable living. • Neighbourhood open space is typically owned and managed by a distant authority, such as a Council, and so even the simplest of local initiatives can become onerous or be thwarted. • Cohousing emerged in the belief that a neighbourhood could be organised to develop community and improve aspects of home and family life, through greater sharing and cooperation between like-minded neighbours, without sacriicing the privacy of individual households or their dwellings. • Environmental improvements are likely from both moving to and living in cohousing, with the latter being substantially an efect of community on individual attitudes and behaviour. Basic Strategies In many design situations, boundaries and constraints limit the application of cutting EDGe actions. In these circumstances, designers should at least consider the following: • Cohousing is an alternative housing type with a limited but nonetheless diverse appeal in parts of Europe and North America in particular, demonstrating the viability of space and facilities devoted to inter-household use when those resources are initiated and managed by the residents themselves. • Since cohousing is a grass-roots initiative, the role of architects generally is not to attempt to inject dedicated common space and facilities into housing schemes in the hope that residents will discover the virtues of cohousing, but rather to extend the dialogue with clients and communities at the feasibility or brieing stages about possible futures that can work. • Two cohousing types with potential in Australia would seem to be, irst, retroit cohousing, in which an existing environment is progressively adapted for cohousing and so the nature and size of the community develops over time. Secondly, cohousing for older people, where the community space and facilities may be minimal but the attraction is companionship and support without surrendering privacy, and maintaining control over one’s living conditions. Cutting EDGe Strategies • Intentional communities such as cohousing have shown that social organisation and cooperation between households can help manage and reduce environmental demands and, importantly, to substitute social engagement for material consumption in achieving quality of life. • he latter attribute may prove to be indispensable in coping with resource scarcity, and so the search for more cooperative and enjoyable lifestyles where we live would become an “essential task” for “the future of humankind” (Coombs, 1990). Synergies and References • Cohousing Association of the United States. http://www.cohousing.org • Crabtree, L, 2005, Sustainable Housing Development in Urban Australia: Exploring Obstacles to and Opportunities for Ecocity Eforts, Australian Geographer, Vol. 36, No. 3, pp. 333-50. • McCamant, K, and Durrett, C, 1994, Cohousing: A Contemporary Approach to Housing Ourselves, Rev. Ed., Ten Speed Press, Berkeley, California, USA. • Meltzer, G, 2005, Sustainable Community: Learning from the Cohousing Model, Traford, Victoria, British Columbia, Canada.