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- Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
- Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
- Sprache: Englisch
Explore a groundbreaking and holistic new approach to designing community-first neighborhoods In Cohousing Communities: Designing for High-Functioning Neighborhoods, distinguished architect and affordable housing advocate Charles Durrett delivers a complete, start-to-finish guide for designing anything where the emphasis lies with the community. This book describes the consequential role that architecture and a healthy design process can play in the success of neighborhoods, churches, towns, and more. It's an inspiring collection of ideas that prioritize high-functioning neighborhoods. In the book, the author draws on the success of hundreds of community-first projects to show readers how to design a project that addresses both timeless and modern challenges--from aging to climate change and racism--in its architecture and urban design. He compiles facts and concepts that are essential to the design of a high-functioning community, where people can participate in a way that reflects their values, improves their social connections, and retain their autonomy and privacy. Readers will also find: * Ideas for town planning, street planning, and other town altering improvements * Discussions of how developers can make better multifamily housing * Explorations of how planners and politicians can make high-functioning neighborhoods a cornerstone of their community * In-depth treatments of families who want to confirm that they're choosing the right neighborhood Perfect for university students and professors who strive to see new ways to create neighborhoods, Cohousing Communities: Designing for High-Functioning Neighborhoods will also appeal to universities planning new neighborhoods for retired alumni or new housing for students and faculty. Praise for Charles Durrett and Cohousing Communities: "...Get and read Cohousing Communities... Read it from the front cover to the back cover. It's The Bible of Cohousing. And, like The Bible, it needs to be STUDIED not just read. Mark it up w/ your questions. Highlight, underline, write in the margins, fold the corners... This way you will gather your understanding how building cohousing gets "done," create your pathway to "Getting It Built"... and, most importantly get everyone on the same page for working together." -- Ann Zabaldo, Executive Director, Mid Atlantic Cohousing
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Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Introduction
DESIGN FOR STRONG COMMUNITIES
WHAT IS A FUNCTIONAL NEIGHBORHOOD?
PART 1: Intergenerational Cohousing Design
1 Intergenerational Neighborhood Design
NOTE
2 Haystack Heights Cohousing
HAYSTACK HEIGHTS COHOUSING
SITE PROGRAM AND DESIGN CRITERIA
PART 1. CONTEXT
PART 2. DESIGN PROGRAM
PART 3. PROGRAM PLACES
PART 4. CONCLUSION
PART 5. SITE PLAN
PART 6. PARTICIPANTS
3 Intergenerational Neighborhood Design
4 Haystack Heights Cohousing
HAYSTACK HEIGHTS COHOUSING
COMMON HOUSE PROGRAM AND DESIGN CRITERIA
PART 1. CONTEXT
PART 2. GOALS & ACTIVITIES
PART 3. PROGRAM PLACES
PART 4. CONCLUSION
PART 5. PARTICIPANTS
ENDNOTE
5 Intergenerational Neighborhood Design
6 Haystack Heights Cohousing
HAYSTACK HEIGHTS COHOUSING
PRIVATE HOUSE PROGRAM AND DESIGN CRITERIA
PART 1. COMMON HOUSE DESIGN FEEDBACK
PART 2. CONTEXT
PART 3. PROGRAM
PART 4. CONCLUSION
PART 5. APPENDIX
PART 2: Senior Cohousing Design
7 Senior Neighborhood Design
ENDNOTE
8 Quimper Village
QUIMPER VILLAGE
SITE PROGRAM AND DESIGN CRITERIA
PART 1. CONTEXT
PART 2. DESIGN PROGRAM
PART 3. PROGRAM PLACES
PART 4. CONCLUSION
PART 5. WORKSHOP SITE PLAN
PART 6. PARTICIPANTS
9 Senior Cohousing Design Concepts
10 Quimper Village
QUIMPER VILLAGE
COMMON HOUSE PROGRAM AND DESIGN CRITERIA
PART 1. CONTEXT
PART 2. GOALS AND ACTIVITIES
PART 3. PROGRAM PLACES
PART 4. CONCLUSION
PART 5. PARTICIPANTS
ENDNOTE
11 Senior Cohousing Design Concepts
12 Quimper Village
QUIMPER VILLAGE
PRIVATE HOUSE PROGRAM AND DESIGN CRITERIA
PART 1. CONTEXT
PART 2. PROGRAM
PART 3. CONCLUSION
PART 4. APPENDIX
PART 3: The Rest of the Story
13 Affordability
PROCESS
COHOUSING PREVALENCE
14 The Details of Cohousing
KEY COHOUSING METRICS: A KEY COMPONENT FOR HIGH-FUNCTIONING NEIGHBORHOODS
COMMUNITY SIZE
PROJECT DENSITY
ECOLOGICALLY ENHANCED PRODUCTION CONSTRUCTION (E.E.P.C.)
INTRODUCTION TO THE PHYSICAL MAINTENANCE OF THE VILLAGE
CULTURE WORKERS
TAKING COHOUSING TO THE AMERICAN CULTURE
Afterword
G
ETTING-IT-BUILT WORKSHOP
STUDY GROUP ONE
SENIOR COHOUSING CERTIFICATION
CRITERIA THAT DEFINE COHOUSING
HOW TO HIRE A LOCAL ARCHITECT
About the Authors
Acknowledgments
Other Books by Charles Durrett and Company
Index
End User License Agreement
Guide
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Introduction
Table of Contents
Begin Reading
Afterword
About the Authors
Acknowledgments
Other Books by Charles Durrett and Company
Index
End User License Agreement
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Cohousing Communities
Designing for High-Functioning Neighborhoods
CHARLES DURRETT, ARCHITECT, AIA
WITH JINGLIN YANG, ALEX LIN, SPENCER NASH, AND NADTHACHAI KONGKHAJORNKIDSUK
Copyright © 2022 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved
Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey
Published simultaneously in Canada
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data applied for
ISBN: 9781119897705 (Paperback)ISBN: 9781119897729 (ePDF)ISBN: 9781119897712 (ePub)
Cover image: Courtesy of Charles DurrettCover design: Wiley
This book is dedicated to all those who teach us that architecture is more than “sexy” façades. Architecture is about making lives and environments better. Architecture can help facilitate a more viable society, and architecture and its associated social settings can address our most noble intentions in building healthier and just realities.
And this book is to the brave souls–the mothers, the fathers, the grandmothers and the grandfathers–who ventured forth to make these environments real.
This book is to all the children that motivated us and deserve a social life that is vibrant and makes them healthy, nurtured, and wise.
And lastly to the bookstores that facilitate the culture change that we need, and to all of the planners, commissioners, councilors, and administrators who know that smarter land use can start with high-functioning neighborhoods like cohousing.
Introduction
“For me, architecture is a social act.”
David Adjaye
Five years of architecture school in California did not prepare me for designing community-enhanced neighborhoods or cohousing communities. Cohousing was a foreign concept here in the U.S. and even the notion of multi-family with enhanced community facilities, such as a place to break bread together, sharing tools, lawnmowers and cars; private kitchens oriented toward common spaces, and remote parking to keep the center free of cars, is rare. Realizing this, Kathryn McCamant and I went off to Denmark to study cohousing design and community-enhanced developments from the best of the best in the world; from the people who started cohousing in Denmark (Jan Gudmand-Høyer), perfected it (Tegnestuen Vandkunsten), and mastered its programming (Jan Gehl and Hans Skifter Anderson). Once we had convinced our many mentors there that we were serious (and not just another looky-loo), it was obvious to them and us that we were not ready to practice after only six months. So, we stayed for another seven months before we felt like we could design cohousing and community-enhanced housing as well as they had done. It was too important to do otherwise. As an architect, it wouldn't be ethical for me to take a penny from anyone to design their community or even to say that I could if I didn't know exactly what I was doing. A routine knee surgery op might be easy with learned hands, but you wouldn't want it to be the surgeon's first time, not to mention they not having gone to medical school.
EMERYVILLE, CA
The second cohousing community finished in the U.S., completed in two years. Most of the residents were born outside of the U.S. and had experienced true community previously in their lives, so they were excited to embrace it again.
Undoubtedly the most important lesson we learned was that the difference between what works to enhance community and what doesn't can be subtle, but the results are vast and the impact on a community is permanent. For example, in a poorly designed cohousing community, a common house might receive less than 50 people-hours of use per week, whereas in a well-designed cohousing community, the common house might receive more than 450 people-hours per week. And they both cost about $500,000 to build! Whether it's people-hours in the common house or people-hours on the sidewalks, individual smiles per half-hour, or collective smiles per half-hour, design makes all the difference.
My mantra is, “If it doesn't work socially, why bother?” How to make that happen is not always obvious. Subtle design factors affect how people feel about their community and their own homes. For instance, buildings that feature natural light have a major positive impact on these feelings. Likewise, the relationships between spaces and other experiential metrics (how close or far things are from each other, acoustics, and hundreds of other little details) affect how happy people are collectively. The arrangement of spaces across the landscape, the common house location, and the floor plans of the private houses impact how happy people are and affect the experiential progressions of what happens first, second, third, and so on as residents walk through the site. These design decisions all have major implications on the social metrics of a given community, such as the amount of conversation on the sidewalks to the number of times people visit each other's houses. All this is to say that this book is a critical resource for anyone interested in living in, learning about, or designing a high-functioning neighborhood. With it, you will have a much better idea of what really matters and why.
Cohousing Communities: Designing for High-Functioning Neighborhoods is designed to help local architects, both new and experienced, to successfully create these enhanced communities. Very few architects have experience in designing cohousing or high-functioning neighborhoods. Even after designing more than 50 cohousing communities and a hundred multi-family buildings and/or neighborhoods, I am still learning. I always feel like my next one will be the best one. I want you, the designer and consumer, to have the best point of departure that you can—informed by what we have learned over the past 40 years. This knowledge must be shared for future generations of architects who hope to create housing that provides people with more than just a place to sleep, eat, and watch TV. When the Danish architects Jan Gudmand-Høyer and Àngels Colom both retired at the same time, the result was noticeable. Upon losing two of the most experienced architects in Denmark, cohousing and neighborhood design there took a dive. Multi-family developments in Denmark started to feel like apartments again, instead of communities. During those years, ironically, seven Danish architects did six-month internships in our office. After returning home to Denmark, they went on to design extremely successful new cohousing communities, and a second wave of success is well underway again there.
PLEASANT HILL, CA
The common building, be it in cohousing or in any community-based design, is the heart of the site plan. It is the essential neutral common place that plays a big role in transforming a collection of houses into a high-functioning neighborhood.
I suspect that less than 1 percent of the U.S. population today lives in a high-functioning neighborhood—places where people feel a strong sense of belonging, identity, and accountability; where everyone knows each other's names, cares about each other, and are prepared to support each other in times of need. A client once told me that she lived in an attractive neighborhood cluster for five years, designed by a famous architect. During her time living there, not one person ever came to her front door. Not once. The houses may have been nice, but the neighborhood was not a high-functioning one. In the case of community-enhanced design, it's as much a political act as anything else. Private developers, non-profit developers, and city planners take a lot of convincing to build community-enhanced neighborhoods. But that is changing too. My hope is that this book will serve as a tool to guide a much bigger market to community-enhanced design than currently subscribes to it.
COTATI, CA
Best in American Living Award – Best Smart Growth Community 2004 by the National Association of Home Builders. It makes sense, and these moms sitting here had a huge role in planning this project. Too often it's the businessmen, bureaucrats, builders, and bankers who make all the relevant decisions in housing. That's wrong. Everyday residents know how to make a high-functioning neighborhood.
This book is also designed to get more people interested in a career in social architecture. If you're interested in sociology and art, you may discover, with one stroke of the pen, the huge difference that you can make in people's lives, emotional well-being, and in their appreciation of the environment. Collectively those strokes add up to a setting, a meaning, and reaching out, as methods for living lighter on the planet while living better and getting along with others at the same time.
Finally, this book was written in collaboration with four millennials: Jinglin Yang, Alex Lin, Spencer Nash, and Nadthachai Kongkhajornkidsuk. If we are going to make headway in the future, millennials need to have a seat at the table.
You will notice that here at The Cohousing Company we approach architecture from an anthropological point of view. We design communities for people. We start the process by asking key questions: Who are these people? What are they seeking? What are their experiences? What are their values? Who are they as a culture, or at least as a subculture? How do relationships and kinships actually work, and how do they wish them to work into the future?
DESIGN FOR STRONG COMMUNITIES
Cohousing Communities is about how to successfully design cohousing and community-enhanced multi-family housing, for-sale condominiums, for-rent apartments, and subsidized affordable projects. Strong communities and positive neighborly relationships are worth it—they are not injured by proximity but enhanced by it. I began this book by looking at condominium and cohousing common facilities exclusively. However, on my first day of writing, I realized that successful common facilities rely on the plans of the site and of the private houses as well. In other words, as the German philosopher G.W. Hegel would say: It's all connected. The data in this book was informed by my visits to over 300 cohousing communities in Europe and studying a hundred of them in great detail, designing over 50 cohousing communities in North America, and consulting on many more around the world; and, just as important, by having lived in three cohousing communities over the past 37 years: Trudeslund in Denmark, Emeryville in the San Francisco Bay Area, and Nevada City in rural California.
There is a lot of conversation in North America about how to scale-up cohousing—how to make more of them faster. McDonaldization is not the solution. At 300 communities in a country of five million, Denmark has more cohousing per capita than any other country and likely will for a long time to come. They use a slower and more thorough organic approach with an eye toward quality and duration. Every project is a model of what we can reach—not a compromise, not an ode to the rearview mirror. Yes, we need to make projects even more affordable, and, yes, we have to make cohousing more accessible and ethnically diverse. But these are not just words; we can accomplish more with deliberate outreach and work than by any other means. When The Cohousing Company won the World Habitat Award, presented by the United Nations in Osaka, Japan, in 2001, for a cohousing community in Atlanta, Georgia, it was a clear sign that the UN recognized that a change to the status quo of a home's environment was necessary. The American middle class needs to find a much smaller footprint. They simply produce too much pollution per capita. The U.S. has an average per capita footprint of 16.2 tons per year, followed by Canada at 15.6 tons. That large-scale metric is perhaps best understood when it's illustrated on a personal scale. The example of Butch, a resident from a nearby cohousing community, comes to mind. Butch told me that he was burning five to six tanks of gas per month for the 20 years he lived in his old single-family house. Now that he lives in cohousing, he burns less than one tank per month while living in the same town.
TRUDESLUND
The carefully considered nooks and crannies of this site are based on the work of the best cohousing programmer in Denmark. Life between these buildings is measurably successful from both a community and privacy point of view. There is a balance: plenty of private outdoor space plus compelling and inviting common space.
VALLEY OAKS. AFFORDABLE HOUSING
SONOMA, CA
A 41-unit affordable housing project designed to be as community enhanced as possible. Parking at the periphery allows kids to play, parents to discuss, and old folks to relate to each other face-to-face in the interior. Subsidized projects with community-enhanced architecture are easier to manage because accountability among neighbors kicks in.
Community-enhanced neighborhoods needn't be more difficult or complicated. It's actually simpler and a lot easier to get right, if you are organized and deliberate. Yes, the methodologies presented in this book drill down and turn over the rocks. And, yes, the Danes have practicing anthropologists and working sociologists who help get cohousing projects off the ground. But architects can learn these disciplines too—although they have to be motivated to do so. Once you've done it a couple of times, it gets easier, but it really helps if you do the first one with a mentor who knows exactly what they are doing. The trick is to see a culture (that is, a group of residents) for who they really are and who they really want to become.
WHAT IS A FUNCTIONAL NEIGHBORHOOD?
What is the definition of a functional neighborhood? Well, imagine that you are the city council and supporting working people and cutting costs are key goals. You would want to invest in, more than anything else, high-functioning neighborhoods. In some neighborhoods people know each other, care about each other, and support each other. In some neighborhoods people know how to share resources, assist each other, and talk to each other about opportunities to cooperate or to mediate disagreements. In some neighborhoods a disabled senior can get dinner from neighbors or a ride to the pharmacy. Someone can pick up groceries routinely if necessary, or a child can safely carpool home with a neighbor if a parent needs to stay at work for another critical half an hour. These neighborhoods and relationships are built on trust and community. Some of these neighborhoods do exist in the United States. They exemplify the sense of strong community and unity that are the building blocks of a functioning society. Conversely, they offer a solution to many ills that result from social isolation and estrangement.
This book started before the COVID-19 pandemic, straddled it, and finished in what seemed to be the pandemic's waning months in the United States. During that time, most people in communities supported each other in meaningful ways and helped each other to stay safe. People often ask us at The Cohousing Company, “How might you alter your designs because of what you learned during the pandemic?” The answer is simple. We would make even more certain that the design facilitates community in the good times (non-pandemic) so that when the bad times come (pandemic or otherwise), people have relationships that they can rely on to help each other to make it through. Cohousing and community-enhanced design allow people to be socially distanced, but not socially isolated. Ultimately, it's community-enhanced designs that help us create a better functioning society.
SAVVAERKET IN HØJBJERG, DENMARK
This is what a high-functioning neighborhood looks like, feels like.
The life between buildings is a direct result of architecture and planning. This book outlines how design can be used to stitch the reality of a high-functioning neighborhood and village together.
NEVADA CITY, CA
Common lunch in a socially separated but not socially isolated community during the COVID-19 pandemic. Relationships must go on. Relationships are built during the good times so that they transcend the bad times.
NEVADA CITY, CA
The houses are different when the design's purpose is to get people connected and to keep them connected. The kitchen sinks face the common walkways. The living rooms are located toward the back. Folks tend not to close their blinds then—they don't mind being seen washing the dishes.
NEVADA CITY, CA
Central but remote parking and central nonvehicular circulation play positive roles in sustaining community. The social community is actually built during the development phase—not brick by brick, but decision by decision. The right architecture and planning are key to maintaining the community once the honeymoon period has worn off after move in.
VALLEY VIEW SENIOR HOMES AMERICAN CANYON, CA
There is so much to learn from high-functioning neighborhoods. Many small changes can be incorporated into low-functioning neighborhoods in order to make them more high-functioning.
NEVADA CITY, CA
Love is where the dog is and where the people are—on the sidewalks, in between the houses in the car-free area.
NEVADA CITY, CA
This isn't Italy, France, Spain, Denmark, or a village in Tanzania where neighbors routinely hang out. This is an American neighborhood where there are opportunities for neighbors to gather spontaneously with no other agenda than to say, “What's up with you?”
OLD NEIGHBORHOOD, NEW COMMON BUILDING
A neighborhood of single-family houses asked us to design a new common building (technically an outbuilding to one of the houses) to meet their needs and desires for facilitating an enhanced community. They wanted not only a place to come together to meditate and dance, but a place to meet, talk, plan, coordinate care for elderly residents, and to break bread. They wanted a space that was right in the middle of the 30 residential houses that everyone could walk to. Still under construction, the barn raising itself played a consequential role in stitching the community together tightly. Whether it was pulling electrical wire or making lunch, everyone contributed and— in collaboration with the contractor—even made trusses. It was all doable.
QUIMPER VILLAGE, WA
Some would argue that the front porch is the most important room in the house.
COTATI, CA
Simple and frequent—having dinner together. It's not a buffet, it's not a wedding reception, we're not in the Navy—we're just sitting down to have dinner with people who we know, care about, and support.
BELLINGHAM, WA
Pedestrian-friendly, car-free environment makes people feel safe without the smell, the sound, and the threat of autos.
PART 1Intergenerational Cohousing Design
In too many neighborhoods everyone is a stranger. Streets are dominated by cars, empty sidewalks, rows of houses behind fences, and closed garage doors. The residents mostly keep to themselves. Adults watch TV by themselves; kids play video games alone. But in community-enhanced neighborhoods, everyone knows each other, cares about each other, and supports each other. The difference between these two kinds of neighborhoods is palpable, and the lives that are led in them are noticeably different.
BELLINGHAM, WA
Strong relationships are what make neighborhoods work over time, but the design plays a huge role in fostering or detracting from those relationships.
1Intergenerational Neighborhood Design: Neighborhood Site Design
“Architecture is a social act and the material theater of human activity.”
Spiro Kostof
Of course, the design of the home itself is of great importance, but the site design concepts ultimately make the biggest difference to the long-term success of a community-enhanced neighborhood. For example, “two hands clapping” means a high-functioning community, where houses face each other and are about 20 feet apart, in contrast with typical neighborhoods where houses are 100–150 feet from doorknob to doorknob, creating a street of anonymity.
When a site has the space, the one-to-three-story scenario is generally the least expensive way to build and to keep construction costs down, and 10–30 units per acre is usually the least costly density to build at if you include site work. However, if the site is small or expensive (or both), it's common to reach 80 units per acre. This can be even denser if the development is associated with other uses, such as other private houses or commercial use. There are certainly high-functioning one-building neighborhoods around the world. I have met plenty of folks from Chicago who talk about five-story walk-up flats where semi-private rear decks connect each floor. Definitely they have a storied sense of community—I have visited many of them and can testify to it. I could see it, feel it, it's palpable, but it's hard to replicate. Then, there is a cohousing community in Gothenburg, Sweden, which is a ten-story building retrofit of a 40-unit rental project that was in need of major repair. The group bought the building and turned the fourth floor into the common house; converted the bottom floor into a utility common area with mailboxes, childcare, and a workshop; and refurbished the 32 apartments into ownership units. From a design point of view, the common house on the fourth floor had to be designed to be attractive—the same is true of the common area on the first floor and the landscaped area around the building. This type of project is completely plausible and we have designed a number of similar projects, including a four-story 19-unit project on 0.24 acres (80 units per acre density) with a 3,500-square-foot common area and a 30-unit project on 0.9 acres with a 4,000-square-foot common area. This dig-deep programming has everything to do with reaching real goals and nothing to do with rear-view mirror thinking, other than the values and experience that you bring to the table. This dig deep programming has everything to do with finding the target and hitting it, finding the problem and solving it. That's the essence of the book titled, Problem Seeking: An Architectural Programming Primer, first written in the 1950s by William Peña, which is still one of the best books on the topic.1 Why try to solve any problem without fully understanding it? Dig deep programming generates hundreds of design criteria (see Chapter 2). That's what moves a culture forward. Many cohousing common houses in North America receive less than 100 people-hours a week. Spending $500,000 for less than 100 people-hours per week is not worth it, yet that sum of money for 450 people-hours a week is well worth it because it also improves how your house works and that's where you save.
SITE DESIGN
If the site has any land at all (2 acres or more), the site plan often evolves toward the form of an ancient Chinese village when choosing to build a community. It flows along the topographic lines marrying the people, the land, and in this case, the farm.
In the 55 cohousing communities and 100 affordable housing projects that we have designed, no one has ever asked for anything like this. Driving down that road, you could imagine a lonely and forlorn senior every 12th house in front of a TV, and a lonely and unhappy child every 10th house plugged into their Nintendo device. It's car-predominant (and therefore dangerous), atomized, and estranged. Inefficient both environmentally and socially.
VEHICLES AFFECT SITE DESIGN
Small, often shared, electric vehicles to get you to the nearest neighborhood center for groceries. This is how you meet the parking requirements without miles and miles of asphalt, as occurs in one American town after another.
Sharing is the new having. In other words, without sharing, you often don't have something. The holistic way of imagining high-functioning neighborhoods is individuals having practical advantages that benefit the entire community. If you can share cars, for example, you can have less asphalt, less consumed land, less concrete, and less costs. The Cohousing Company designed a 31-unit project a couple of years ago that had 31 parking spots and 4 shared cars. It was required to have 2 parking spots per unit, or 62 parking spots in total, but sharing 4 cars dispensed with that requirement for this project.
MUIR COMMONS SITE PLAN
It's easy to see why there is so much child-to-parent activity in Muir Commons from the site plan alone. It feels like a village. Muir Commons—the first cohousing community in the U.S.—started in 1989 and finished in 1991.
And this dig deep programming (cultural change, or at least a cultural pivot) has nothing to do with prejudices, pop magazines, Pinterest, Facebook, or the flavor du jour. It has everything to do with the question of “Who do we really want to be?,” at least in the context of land-use and neighborhoods.
This is what cohousing groups strive for and why architects design multi-family housing to deliver sustainability to the greatest extent feasible and to promote diversity best. It's all about moving closer to where you want to be, as fast as you can, at least compared to where you used to be.
MUIR COMMONS, CA
It's easy to make something that works for all the kids—“our gang.” And of course, there is a sense of accomplishment when you make a bridge that lets everyone get around. Not all site projects have to be bought and built at move-in. These kids (with the help of a parent) built this project after move-in.
MUIR COMMONS, CA
Fire pits are fun, and they bring the whole neighborhood together. Breaking bread together, sitting around the fire, working together for tasks like a mini barn raising—this is life in a socially and physically well-designed neighborhood.
NEVADA CITY, CA
Working it, then reworking it.
NEVADA CITY, CA
The house blocks laid out after two days of programming and establishing criteria.
NEVADA CITY, CA
When people are outside of their house (but still on their property) in regular suburban neighborhoods, they are in their front yard about 20 percent of the time and in the backyard the other 80 percent of the time. In high-functioning neighborhoods, it's the other way around, 80 percent on the front porch, and 20 percent in the back.
Something happens when you know and care about your neighbor. You want to stay connected and see how they are doing.
NEVADA CITY, CA
One of the mechanisms to get the new houses to half of the average house price in Nevada City was to sell off seven lots at the north periphery of the interface of the site and the street. Each of the lots had an extra ADU unit, meaning the project sold off a total of 14 other units. This also kept the cohousing from getting too large and therefore too difficult to manage by consensus. In the end, 3.5 acres went to cohousing, 1.5 acres went to the seven lots that were sold, and 6 acres are left as open space. In the final four days of site planning, as the group came to grips with the economics and social performance of less spread-out houses, it was decided to leave 6 acres of open space and to use an acre of that for a vegetable garden.
The private house porches add a friendly interface to the street, which is much better than seeing the rear end of 50 cars, even if some of them are electric.
NEVADA CITY, CA
A spontaneous lifestyle is a commonly stated goal in high-functioning neighborhoods. On the left, Victoria is texting her boyfriend to let him know that she's joining her three neighbors going to the movies this Sunday evening. The movies aren't a big deal, but parents talking about childrearing, elders talking about aging successfully, and people discussing and solving the myriad of issues in life are what makes a high-functioning neighborhood a great neighborhood… and sometimes going to the movie with friends.
NEVADA CITY, CA
Site plans in community-enhanced neighborhoods make this activity easy and natural.
NEVADA CITY, CA
Meg (to the right) was encouraged to move to the closest house to the parking by her kids, after all, she was 89 when she moved in—just a few dozen feet from her home. Then, one day, she moved to the house farthest from the parking, about seven-hundred feet away. I queried her one day—“Meg, why?” She said that she relied on her relationships with her neighbors much more than she did on her automobile. Seven-hundred feet away meant that she saw more of them on her way home every day. Meg passed away three weeks before her 100th birthday.
NEVADA CITY, CA
Community-enhanced design is a 100 percent pedestrian neighborhood. People walk from a central parking area to their housing elsewhere. We have become conditioned to have our vehicles practically enter our bedrooms, but those who can use a pull wagon or a wheelchair live a much richer life. Those who want to live next to the parking can do that.
NEVADA CITY, CA
This is the point of community-enhanced design. The residents are talking about the issues of the day and helping each other out when it makes sense. The people are the picture, the buildings are the picture frame.
NEVADA CITY, CA
This is exactly what this neighborhood was designed to do—to create a life and a pulse between the buildings
NEVADA CITY, CA
Play, play, play. That's the world where kids grow, grow, grow.
NEVADA CITY, CA
Make a safe place for the kids to hang out. Kids need and want flat grassy playfields, but it works better if they are populated with peers and if you can see it from most houses. Few single-family houses have a big enough lawn, much less kids nearby, not to mention that this flat spot is open to any kid at any time. It's the quintessential activity that attracts activity for any high- functioning neighborhood.
NEVADA CITY, CA
Kids just want a place to be and converge with one another. To see, to be seen, and to see who else might come along and join them.
NEVADA CITY, CA
Perches
Places to see what's going on (if done right). The kids really own the place, as they should.
NEVADA CITY, CA
The kids, as usual, make high-functioning neighborhoods worthwhile. Kids play a big role in stitching a neighborhood together. It is important to make sure that they have plenty of car-free space. Make sure that they have each other—recruit young families. Have lots of open space, wild areas, water, slopes, flat hardscapes, and flat green areas if there is enough space.
What does design have to do with the relationship of these kids? Everything. In a safe neighborhood, they can go from house to house without interacting with cars. Parents feel safe, and the kids are safe.
NEVADA CITY, CA
There is not as much TV in a high-functioning neighborhood. Also adventurous free-range kids seem to like sloped sites. Open-ended play opportunities are the beginning and the end to invention. It may seem trivial, but it's not—it's the point. The younger kids trust the bigger kids to not let them crash.
NEVADA CITY, CA
The point of a high-functioning neighborhood—kids figuring out what this whole life deal is all about with others.
NEVADA CITY, CA
Kids like flat spots, too.
NEVADA CITY, CA
Even the simplest of structures has play value when you can see it and the kids playing there from all of the houses.
NEVADA CITY, CA
Rocks, logs, water, trees, and a swale here and there. Natural elements bring the best play value.
NEVADA CITY, CA
Mentoring happens readily when one kid can safely stroll to another kid's house without their parents' supervision.
NEVADA CITY, CA
The Vortex, as the residents refer to the neighborhood pool. A key tenet of community-enhanced design is that activity attracts activity.
NEVADA CITY, CA
A car-free world does a lot to bring people together and makes them more social and safer.
NEVADA CITY, CA
The common basketball hoop and two surrounding houses in the neighborhood.
NEVADA CITY, CA
Playing dress up on the walkway.
NEVADA CITY, CA
Exercise and fun is all over the site. That is the nature of a village. There doesn't have to be a special exercise room to get that job done. Relationships fostered during design and management decisions make this possible.
NEVADA CITY, CA
Nature goes a long way toward “play value” for kids. Have some places for them to hide, like here in the large swale. They need “wild” places.
NEVADA CITY, CA
Vegetable and fruit gardens seem to be a part of just about every new high- functioning neighborhood. Vegetables are planted in both individual and collective plots. There usually is a committee or a club, who plan out the spring plantings as well as the summer and fall harvests. They have special work days where anyone can participate. Usually, individual harvesting is limited to those who have participated, even if only a little, but there is always an abundance and widespread generosity.
SPOKANE, WA
The common building is often prominent in a cohousing community. It's neither a public nor private building—it's common, it's ours to steward and ours to collectively imagine how we can assist the larger community. The light switch to the cupola of the common building is in the sitting room so that people can tell if someone is there from the entire neighborhood.
SPOKANE, WA
Site plan.
SPOKANE, WA
After two days of site criteria, then two evenings of site design with the group.
PLEASANT HILL, CA
Site Plan.
Note all of the parking on the south end of the site plan, leaving the neighborhood feeling like a village.
PLEASANT HILL, CA
Condominiums can be anonymous where people keep to themselves and seldom talk to their neighbors—or they can be a vibrant neighborhood.
PLEASANT HILL, CA
Preferably, residents should make it a habit to walk by the common building when walking home from their car.
Pooling the parking like this facilitates the possibility of using much less asphalt per house (between 300–400 square feet per house) compared to typical suburban housing (often higher than 1,500 square feet per house).
Asphalt effectively destroys the soil below it.
PLEASANT HILL, CA
The ability to see the sidewalks and the circulation of people from innumerable vantage points is a great way to stitch a neighborhood together. First there's the eye contact, then there's the smile, then there's the wave, then the “how are you?” and then the “do you have a minute?” All of these relationships and meaningful interactions are built; if you don't have time, just smile and say, “have to keep going.” Then there's Damien on the right who is blind, but very interested in the community. So, he sits out front and people stop to talk to him.
FAIR OAKS, CA
Socially distanced, but not socially isolated.
FAIR OAKS, CA
Flag lots and single spine circulation are perfect for community-enhanced design. Everyone is included, everyone is appreciated.
FAIR OAKS, CA
The drawings have to tell the story. Neighbors are always concerned about ticky-tacky new multi-family in their neighborhood. They need to see life between the buildings, real architecture and color. So when I show them our other projects—they see the vibrancy.
BELLINGHAM, WA
This is what leaving the wetland alone looks like. The houses were designed away from the wetlands to preserve their character. It feels like a village. I feel like I can say that after having lived in a village and having moved to and “designed” villages with others in Africa for a year.
BELLINGHAM, WA
As planned by the previous developer, the site plan had a much larger carbon footprint. Single-family lots were given a pie shape, and the entire front of the houses was a garage door. Among other things this “solution” used four times more concrete and asphalt hardscape (driveways, sidewalks, roads, and walkways) than the 33 socially centripetal houses that were built on the site.
BELLINGHAM, WA
Cozy, two hands clapping.
BELLINGHAM, WA
Inexpensive garages with appeal.
BELLINGHAM, WA
One lane and two courtyards, remote parking, saving the wetlands, all furthered the intentions of the program. We rehabilitated the private house on the 5-acre property into the common house. And since it's all new, it has to be accomplished with each group and site because it changes what inhabiting the neighborhood is like—in other words, it's not just neighborhood-making, it's culture change. It's not the neighborhood that they inhabited before, it's not looking in the rear-view mirror—it's leaning toward their aspirations instead.
TUCSON, AZ
Teens often wonder if they are too closely supervised in a village. But in interview after interview, they all say that in the end, “I'm just glad that people care,” “it's good to be noticed,” “it's good to be seen.”
TUCSON, AZ
Singular circulation or courtyards along the central spine both work well.
FRESNO, CA
In a neighborhood surrounded by beige, this common house in Fresno raised eyebrows when it was painted. Red, white, and blue went up on a Saturday. The neighbors came over on Sunday and I happened to be there. As they were leaving, one exclaimed, “Well, as long as there's no purple.” Well, there wasn't on Sunday, but there was on Monday. Since then, the neighbors and residents have expressed that the colors make their day every day.
TUCSON, AZ
A modern-day village with mountains in the backdrop.
FRESNO, CA
The single circulation is the tried and true—the best way to maintain community over time—and La Querencia Cohousing does it as good as any.
FRESNO, CA
La Querencia is a very successful cohousing site plan because of the singular circulation and remote parking.
FRESNO, CA
The site plan and the overhanging roofs were designed to keep the building as cool as possible. Shading sombreros, if you will, in the baking central California heat. The summer noon-day sun does not go into the house.
SOUTHSIDE, CA
Since when were setbacks considered a benefit to the street? Who wants setbacks in their lives?
Sacramento City asked that the houses be close (5–7 feet) to the sidewalks because that would help define the street, give the street interest, and make the street more walkable and put eyes closer to the street. The Fifth and T Street neighborhood is not known as safe, but with more eyes on the street, the safer it is. Designers and advocates for better urban design contest setbacks when they do not make sense.
SOUTHSIDE, CA
Site planning with the folks of Southside Cohousing in Sacramento, California. Two days of developing criteria and then two evenings of creating a site plan based on that criteria (two different groups in two separate rooms) until—since they are working on the same criteria—the two site plans merged into one.
SOUTHSIDE, CA
The closer the houses are to the street, the more common area there is behind, as seen in this small 1.25 acre for 25 units site.
WINDSONG, LANGLEY, B.C., CANADA
A common street “living room” make for perfect circulation in a high-functioning neighborhood. Covered streets provide for a lovely “common living room” for neighbors to enjoy for at least three seasons a year.
WINDSONG, LANGLEY, B.C., CANADA
EMERYVILLE, CA
A dilapidated factory transformed into warm and cozy cohousing community.
EMERYVILLE, CA
Start with a one-story factory, derelict and abandoned. Learn every beam, every timber, every brick and bolt, overlay a carefully considered cohousing program, and boom…
Old buildings can often bring charm, even when not obvious, that you can't buy today.
EMERYVILLE, CA
This project took four major variances to accomplish entitlements, otherwise known as city approvals. Three feet over the 30-foot height limit; zero-foot setback in lieu of the 15-foot setback; half of the required parking; and twice the allowable number of dwelling units.
EMERYVILLE, CA
…turn it into a three-story, lively cohousing community right in the heart of a built-up industrial area with a new café across the street. These condominiums started at $130,000, a question that never goes away—how much did it cost?
Even in high-rise solutions, residents' participation shows a new story for how dense downtown housing (80 units to the acre) can be designed. One hundred percent of the time they will be quite different to what a typical Business, Banker, Architect, Bureaucrat, Builder (the BBABB team) would come up with.
SANTA CRUZ, CA
Front Façade
Zero setback on the streets, balconies over the sidewalk (left), common terrace (on the right) over underground parking access.
WALNUT COMMONS IN SANTA CRUZ, CALIFORNIA
Note the floor plans—different than typical. Common space on every floor, gracious corridors, adequate outdoor area. Windows from the kitchens to corridors and houses that really fit the long-term needs of the community, rooftop gardens, gathering areas near the vertical circulation (stairs and elevator), and the oversize mail room and sitting areas in the corridors. That's what makes benign, palatable high-density (80 units to the acre) vertical cohousing work.
SANTA CRUZ, CA
An upper floor at Walnut Commons. Private condominiums and common spaces at each floor.
SANTA CRUZ, CA
The couple on the right moved from a 20-acre vineyard with a sprawling house in a sprawling neighborhood to a 1,200-square-foot condo in a high-functioning neighborhood in the city. The new community is an amenity that they did not have previously—such as neighbors who make dinner for them several times a week. As they added amenities, their house is far from the least expensive, but we need units like theirs in order to make the other units less expensive.
BERKELEY, CA
Neighborly life between the houses is obvious and frequent.
BERKELEY, CA
This project brought a lot of affordability to the table. First, it had three single moms and two elderly single women who needed houses for $130,000 each.
The average house in Berkeley at the time (1995) was $500,000. They bought a dilapidated rental project with no renters and turned it into ownership housing that was less costly to the new owners than their rental properties were previously. Then we doubled the density and the square footage by raising houses up, putting new houses under them, and built new houses on top of the old ones.
BAKKEN, DENMARK
A good site design is crucial to letting the community develop and sustain itself long after the honeymoon period has worn off.
BAKKEN, DENMARK
Bakken is widely considered to have one of the best site plans in Denmark for community making. Why? Because they had the secondmost thorough of all of the design programs. It was developed with the help of world-famous architect Jan Gehl who truly understands the potential for healthy human behavior in the built environment. And definitely the best professor I ever had.
SAVVAERKET
Højbjerg, Denmark
This is what a modern-day village can feel like.
TRUDESLUND, DENMARK
I planned to sit on the peak of this community's common building roof from 4:30 p.m. to 5:30 p.m. on a lovely spring day to track site foot traffic. But after just 25 minutes, the page became crowded with demarcated circulation lines. So the circulation you see is that afternoon over 25 minutes. It illustrates just how busy a high-functioning neighborhood is. I did this on the roofs of 15 high-functioning cohousing communities in Denmark and they all looked about the same—chocked full of foot traffic from house to house, to common house, to the common garden, parking to common house, common house to play yard, and so on.
There were so many aspects of the design in combination with the social success that put a lot of lines on the paper.
Someone would announce that we have far too little parking. Then, the next day, someone would announce that we have far too much parking. Only observation would illuminate the facts. The fact is that the very careful 20-minute neighborhood-wide discussion about parking two years earlier was more or less exactly right and that's what they built.
There are many reasons that they have the highest common house use that we know of, right at 750 people-hours per week. One is that the parking is very concentrated, people run into each other in the parking lot and continue their conversation over a cup of tea in the common house. Additionally, most people walk by the common house on their way home. People can tell if there is life there from their own houses. And they moved in with 60 kids so after school there was (and sometimes still is) a popular program.
TRUDESLUND, DENMARK
In Trudeslund not only is the common house on the way home from parking, but you can also see it from almost every house. That helps with the 750 people-hours that the cohousing common house garners each week.
Trudeslund, still the gold standard in excellent site design. Programmed (including schematic design) by the best cohousing architect in Denmark (Jan Gudmand-Høyer), the design was then finished by one of the best architectural firms in Denmark (Vandkunsten).
TRUDESLUND, DENMARK
People stopping to chat, to be a neighbor, to catch up—that's the point of a functioning neighborhood.
COTATI, CA
This cohousing community features 30 dwellings on 2.2 acres (8 of which are above the 7,500 square feet of commercial), 4,000 square feet of common house, and 32 dedicated parking spaces. In terms of density, 10–30 units per acre is the sweet spot for keeping the costs down in high-functioning neighborhoods.
COTATI, CA
With mixed-use comes an interface with the larger neighborhood.
COTATI, CA
Surrounded by two other new neighborhoods, Cotati Cohousing took three years to get designed, approved, financed, and built. The surrounding two projects took five and seven years. The magic bullet for innovation and expedition is having future residents on board before the design begins. This is truly the best way to get a project designed, approved, sold out, and financed more quickly and in a higher quality.
COTATI, CA
This cohousing was the first project in 30 years in this town of 5,000 people to be mixed-use with commercial below and residential above. Businessmen and city officials alike did not think mixed-use was a good idea. But future residents can usually push the envelope and make innovations possible and move forward. Sometimes, in development, what's new, what's better, is what's old when things were less vehicle-oriented. Traditional land use patterns like neighborhood centers, residential dwellings above shops, towers at the entry to town, canopies, walkable streets, and storefronts are new again.
COTATI, CA
