Green building means more than just using low-VOC paint. While any small steps we can take immediately are great, in the long-run we have to develop a fully sustainable built environment for ourselves and our communities. In my last green building entry, I looked at a whole town being built around the principals of environmentally sustainable development, but recently I came across a smaller scale solution in a NY Times article: cohousing. The cohousing model originated in Denmark in the 1960s, and has since spread around the world: there are over 100 cohousing communities in the US and Canada today, with as many as 100 more in the pipeline. These communities range from 7 to 67 seperate residences, with most falling somewhere between 20 and 40. Cohousing developments can be urban, suburban, or rural, as the multitude of example in The Cohousing Association of the United States’ (Coho/US) website demonstrates. The 6 defining characteristics of cohousing according to Coho/US:

1. Participatory process. A group of buyers usually forms before construction and funds the project together.

2. Neighborhood design. The community then works with an architect to create its ideal living environment. These first two features make cohousing a very fluid process, limited only by the imaginations and desires of the project’s initial residents.

3. Common facilities. While individuals and families have their own residences, cohousing developments feature common spaces—usually indoors and outdoors.

4. Resident management. Once the project is built, the members of the community keep it running.

5. Non-hierarchical structure and decision-making. There are of course leaders of various aspects of the community, but major decisions are reached by consensus or a democratic model. By definition no one resident/family has more power than any other.

6. No shared community economy. So far this arrangement may sound a bit like a commune, but it is actually a pretty mainstream way of life: cohousing residents carry on their lives outside of the neighborhood as usual.

Cohousing offers the social advantages of urban living, but captures the intimate charm of a suburban or rural lifestyle. These developments can serve as a more harmonious planned community or a more capitalistic, less cultish commune, depending on what you’re looking for. Residents find it an especially great environment for raising children, but I’d imagine it can also lead to a more active social life for residents of all ages.

So, what makes cohousing a green issue, why should we be discussing it on an ecomii blog? The big environmental advantage of cohousing is less space and less stuff. Inhabitants still have their own private homes, but share spaces and objects such as their yard, workshop, lawnmower, etc. depending on the specific arrangement. Besides the economic and social advantages, this also helps to lower residents’ ecological footprints. Clustered houses often leave more open space, which provides both a recreational area for residents and a larger area for an eco-system to develop (more so in rural developments). Besides the space/stuff advantage, if sustainability is important to you on an individual level then a cohousing model provides a more convenient platform to promote a more sustainable lifestyle in your neighborhood than just passing flyers around to neighbors. Finally, environmental sustainability is often a shared value of those who form a cohousing association and, therefore, incorporated into the development’s design, construction, and operation.

I don’t know that cohousing will revolutionize society and, being a fairly private (and often grumpy) person, I can certainly see some downsides to this living arrangement. However, this is a practical way for individuals to make an impact in (literally) building a better society: a common cohousing motto is “Changing the World, One Neighborhood at a Time.” A lot of people assume that the typical suburban configuration which dominates US housing is a result of free market forces; however, as Columbia University’s Earth Institute’s Director Jeffrey Sachs points out in a recent issue of Scientific American, the housing market is restrained by town planning regulations, government built infrastructure, and other market distortions. Cohousing gives a small group—a neighborhood or community—the opportunity to create a socially, economically, and environmentally sustainable living space as the members see fit.