Learning to Read Again in the 21st Century

“No one reads anymore”

is a common refrain. Yet it takes two things to successfully pull of a cohousing community,

1. The ability of the participants to listen to each other.

2. And to read. Pictures alone don’t do it, and lessons learned alone is a sure way to go nowhere – they just tell you what didn't work, they don’t tell you how to get to what does work – that’s a deliberate other process.

Successful reading for the 21st century looks something like this.

a.    Flip through the book, look at all of the photos. It gives you great context (About 15 minutes).

b.    Go back and read all of the captions. Those sound bites in rapid fire will surprise you, and make you more curious (About 45 minutes).

c.    Read the text that draws you in based on the curiosities developed by the captions and the photos. Most people will skip about half of the narrative – they are just not interested, but hopefully others in the group are. You will know what you need to know to be a responsible co-designer, co-developer, and hopefully others will know the rest.

And Bob’s your uncle. Give it a try.

My last two books, Cohousing Communities (900 photos and 900 captions) and Neuro-Inclusive Community Design (about 450 photos and 450 captions) were both developed with this methodology in mind, and this methodology has seen results. More cohousing groups are coming to the table ready to go, ready to participate, ready to contribute, and ready to work as a team.

The Creation of a Word

One afternoon in spring 1985, Erik B. Jantzen, director of the Danish State Building Institute, asked me (Chuck) for an English translation of “Bofǽllesskab” (the Danish word for cohousing) by the very next morning. I spent the entire night considering 35 possible options, including the awkward acronym CRD (Community Residential Development).

“Bofǽllesskab” literally means “living together communities." The English prefix CO- means “together.” The dictionary lists out many CO-words (40-50, depending on the dictionary), such as cocreate, convivial, cooperation, and community. It seemed natural that “cohousing” belonged among them. All the other options I thought up that night were much less elegant.

In the morning, I called Mr. Jantzen: “I have the word: COHOUSING.” He replied, “Okay, thank you,” and they went with it. When Katie woke up later, she exclaimed, “Oh my, you can’t just make up a word!” I responded, “Well, I just did, and they’re using it as of today.”

I trademarked the word for The Cohousing Company in 1988. Later that year, the book Cohousing: A Contemporary Approach to Housing Ourselves was published.

Ten years later, the trademark was dropped to allow the model cohousing projects built by that time to define cohousing. Since then, the successful book Cohousing Communities: Designing for High-Functioning Neighborhoods has come to define the word with these six characteristics:

1. Participation. Co-developed, co-designed, and co-organized with the future resident group. First and foremost, the future residents are an integral part of creating the future community.

2. A private home, but also extensive common facilities that supplement and facilitate daily living. Common facilities are perceived as an extension of each resident’s house and supplement each home. There must be practical reasons to bring people together. Common meals must be held at least once a week. There is no more timeless means of sustaining community than breaking bread together.

3. Designed to facilitate naturally oriented community interaction over time. Not auto-oriented.

4. Residents own their own homes and almost entirely manage the community. Each cohousing community decides how to organize itself. The residents are responsible for the work and play of managing their lives and neighborhood. Every household is on the board.

5. No hierarchy in decision-making. Cohousing is about cooperation rather than a type of ownership. And, as it turns out, cooperation transcends ownership type. Cohousing generally relies on consensus.

6. No shared economy. Unlike that of the commune or sometimes a co-op structure, cohousing community members do not share personal income, except as required to maintain the premises and other investments that they choose by consensus or a similar process.

While the characteristics of cohousing are globally relevant, I suggest in the new book Taking Cohousing to the World (currently in draft form) that most cultures may benefit from developing their own word for cohousing, to personalize its meaning and boundaries—to know where the beginning and the end are. As the new book's premise suggests, this process will allow each culture to answer the questions: “Who are we, who do we want to become, and how do we get there?”

The Antidote to Hopelessness is Getting Organized

A good friend of mine is a therapist. Most of his clients are young and dwell extensively on the lack of opportunity to achieving the American dream and therefore have a lack of incentive and motivation. The protestant ethic says work hard, save your money get ahead. But there is a hopelessness today. Using existing capitalistic models is definitely not working. It’s time to come up with new models. Getting organized and cooperating is not new at all. Now the youth have to build something that works for them. It starts with getting organized, sharing, perhaps downsizing, and discipline. But discipline that happens with the kind of others. Best noticed and that work best in Denmark there are a lot of get waves to ahead with others. Thats where the advantage is. The main advantage in Denmark is a philosopher that emphasizes success through cooperation. He’s famous for educating farmers on how not to go it alone. If you want to buy grain for the same amount as folks with 100 cows, organizing farmers until they add up to 100 cows. While Americans are still stuck at, “I have to do everything myself to get ahead.” An old model.

The Danish model for a long time is, “I better do it with others to get ahead.” As Jeff puts it, these Gen Z and Millennials are lacking hope, which leads to complacency and a lack of motivation. The solution has to lay with sharing resources. They need a framework that provides them with a vision, and a structure like putting an affordable cohousing together.

This is not the time for “pull yourself up by the bootstraps.” This is the time for, “if we’re going to get something done, let’s meet this Saturday afternoon–all ten of us at 4pm. Let’s make this happen together.

Revitalizing Costa Rica

I have always appreciated Costa Rica, with its lack of military, amazing nature preserves and more. But San Jose (the capital) is in a bad way. Almost five hundred 4-6 story buildings are empty. Downtown San Jose in just the last 20 years and it has fallen victim of the “donut effect”. Losing about 30,000 people now the workers commute in 30 to 90 minutes, and the traffic is always bad except early Sunday morning.

On my recent trip to Costa Rica, I started walking the city right off the plane. The director and staff of the non-profit Fundación Yamuni Tabush, the downtown revitalizations sponsor, building owners, and financial experts lead me through the city. We visited five buildings which were once used as office spaces–now empty. The first floor is where workers and tourists have lunch and shop. After consideration, I suggested which buildings should be intergenerational cohousing, (located in an area with room for kids to run around.) Then the buildings that should be senior cohousing, these featured safe dog walking and strolling parks and walking streets, cultural activities, and easy-to-get-to shops where 4-5 seniors could stroll together.

One of the newly 500 empty buildings in San Jose.

Homelessness is another big issue in Costa Rica today. Venezuelans get stopped at the U.S border and get turned back. They then travel all of the way back south through Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, then finally back to Costa Rica where there is some semblance of humanitarian social services (although many people are still sleeping on the sidewalk). So I proposed some buildings be converted to supportive (transitional/permanent) housing with services. With careful remodeling of the buildings, they can feel more like villages and not shelters which lend themselves to “Lord of the Flies” like behavior.

I also suggested that they consider a community for folks who work in the red-light district. Prostitution is legal in Costa Rica, but many argue that it is having an adverse effect on the culture not to mention the individuals involved. I proposed to the city a project reminiscent of a community designed by The Cohousing Company in Morgan Hill, California, where every single mom in that case were enrolled in school. The houses, as you can see in the sketches from the book Cohousing Communities: Designing for High-Functioning Neighborhoods shows mom and kids have a bedroom, and a bathroom, but shared common areas. Those common areas allow for mom to do homework while another mom is cooking for everyone. Although, they do not have to leave after they graduate from their two-year skills program. San Jose is currently a skilled-worker desert, and a haven for aberrant activities so tech school would be great.

The secret ingredient to all of these proposed communities will be facilitating a respectful and participatory design process ­– where the design genuinely reflects the needs of the participants.

A new street with the rehabbed buildings at each end is also necessary. The streets, sidewalks, lighting and most of the infrastructure is currently in shambles and crumbling, neglected by the extremely corrupt former Mayor of 30 years. On the last day of my trip, I did a presentation and proposed to the new Mayor and Vice Mayor along with many concerned citizens and business people, proposing how the city could finance the street improvements and square improvements. This could give the business and landowners the confidence that they need to remodel and finally rent out, or sell, their buildings. This would revitalize the town to its once vibrant self.

A Book Review: "Tribes of Eden" by William Thomas

In the book Tribes of Eden by William Thomas, the world goes to hell in a handbasket enforced and advanced by the federal government and their incessant abuse of power. Dr. William Thomas, a bestselling non-fiction author (What are Old People For? How Elders Will Save the World, published by Vanderwyk & Burnham, 2004) and many others. This is his first novel (published in 2012), but Mr. Thomas proves that sometimes, if not usually, art is more to the point, and even truer than non-fiction. And certainly more powerful and honest because it says what can’t be said or even always proven or even implied as non-fiction.

In the book Tribes of Eden by William Thomas, the world goes to hell in a handbasket enforced and advanced by the federal government and their incessant abuse of power. Dr. William Thomas, a bestselling non-fiction author (What are Old People For? How Elders Will Save the World, published by Vanderwyk & Burnham, 2004) and many others. This is his first novel (published in 2012), but Mr. Thomas proves that sometimes, if not usually, art is more to the point, and even truer than non-fiction. And certainly more powerful and honest because it says what can’t be said or even always proven or even implied as non-fiction.

“Haudenosaunee” or the people of the long house) offered, which was so much richer than suburbs or other estranged housing, where divide and conquer, especially if you have a computer is too easy. In the story, typical political ladder climbing at city councils and counties around the states doesn’t work because everyone is beholden to “the power”. Tribes recognizes that we are in this together and here for each other at the same time and it is probably only together that they survived, indeed thrived.

Book Review by Chuck Durrett