Cohousing is a new type of housing started in Denmark in the early 1970's. It is a way of fostering community on a small scale (generally 15-30 households). The news and success of cohousing in Denmark has spread over the years with cohousing communities being built in a number of other countries. There are now well over 5,000 people who live in these small communities.

The cohousing movement in the US began after Katherine McCammant and Charles Durrett, two architects from California, spent a year living in a number of these communities in 1985. They were so impressed with what they experienced that they wrote a book in 1988, Cohousing-A Contemporary Approach to Housing Ourselves. The book now in its 2nd edition has created interest all over the US with well over a 100 different groups exploring the possibility of cohousing for themselves. There are now 60 cohousing communities that have either been completed, are now being built, or are being planned. A national magazine, Cohousing, has been created to keep track of many of the developments that are now taking place.

What separates cohousing from other forms of housing is the participation of members who help design the buildings, take responsibility in day to day management of the housing, and use common areas that are designed for daily interaction and use by its members-example common evening meals.

Although housing may be financed conventionally with each household paying their own mortgage, there is a commitment of members to take responsibility for management of the overall operation of the community and for aspects that help to support others with in the community such as child care.

The process of building community begins with a small core group long before there are any buildings. Through the process of meetings and social events the core group can get to know each other better, build the trust, and create an out reach program to attract others. This usually takes a minimum of several years.

When a household joins a cohousing community they are not just investing in housing for themselves. They are also investing in the community that they can both support and be supported by. The community provides an opportunity for people to take more responsibility for their own lives and for the lives of their neighbors.

In the Chicago area Ujima Place, the first cohousing development of 8 town houses was completed in the spring of 1997 by the residents in the Lawndale area on the west side of Chicago. The project was designed with the help of developer Perry Bigalow and the Lawndale Community Church for working poor. With the help of sweat equity and donations of some materials townhouses sell for around $30,000.

As a pile of lumber, nails and paint is not a house, so just a collection of people is not a community (though many people use the term in this way). A true community results less from formal organization than from common traditions, culture, and outlook. It is an orchestra, win which each member plays their part, often improvising, but with an overall harmonizing result. In relatively impersonal city life, a person may work with one group, study with another, dwell with still another, yet deeply share life with none. In true community many activities are shared with the same people. The unified living results in deeper social roots and more unified personalities.

A person is not a normal organism by themselves, but only in relationship with others. People live best in integrated groups of limited size. They crave community life, not simply social life. The impulse to create and participate in community life is so deep seated and so strong that where it finds no opportunity for expression, grave injury to personality may follow. ( I would say that personality just doesn't develop as fully as it might)

The greatest of all social aims is that of developing the qualities of character and intelligence which will lead each person of their own volition to play that part which is best for society as a whole. Such an attitude would vastly simplify the process of social adjustment.

The roots of culture are not its fine arts, technology, and political institutions. These are the flower and fruit. The roots of culture are underlying drives, motives, habits, and purposes. If these are socially sound and vitally alive in good social soil, them the fruit will appear. If these underlying elements are unrefined, weak, and undisciplined, then the fine arts, the technology, and complex organization can not long endure.

IN THE LONG RUN THE BASIC CULTURE OF HUMAN SOCIETY CAN MAINTAIN ITSELF AT NO HIGHER A LEVEL THAN THE CULTURE OF THE SMALL COMMUNITY. YET THE SMALL COMMUNITY HAS BEEN NEGLECTED, EXPLOITED AND DESPISED, WHILE SOCIETY HAS PAID A VERY HIGH PRICE FOR THIS NEGLECT. TODAY SOCIETY IS DISSOLVING ITS CELL AND TISSUE WALLS AND AS A RESULT IS LOSING THE POWER TO PRESERVE AND TRANSMIT ITS BASIC CULTURE.

Should people of serious purpose realize the extent to which local community is the seed bed of civilization, the source of basic character and culture, as well as the medium for their preservation and transmission, then, within their communities, they would be sowing the seeds and cultivating the growth of a better future.