Between alienation and claustrophobia?

Sustainable Community: Learning From the Cohousing Model

Graham Meltzer, Ph.D. (Victoria, British Columbia: Trafford Publishing, 2005), 189 pp.

The global consumer class is steadily expanding around the globe, and with it so is the consumer culture, in which technology more and more substitutes for community. People are watching more TV, commuting alone to work, and buying larger houses, increasingly distancing themselves from their neighbors. So Graham Meltzer's book, Sustainable Community: Learning From the Cohousing Model--which asserts that residents of cohousing communities with small houses and shared common spaces are generally happier--is timely. The global trend toward rampant individualism causes one to wonder how individuals living closer to their neighbors in a less individualistic and more group-oriented way can choose such a lifestyle and actually thrive on it.

Cohousing communities are residential models rooted in a voluntary commitment to group priorities, goals, and concerns, expressed in a variety of ways, from scheduled communal meals to coordinated trips to the grocery store. Usually arranged in one of four generic neighborhood layouts, these communities share certain facilities--kitchens, recreation areas, gardens, driveways--as well as a collective sense of ownership of the living community. Characterized by a spirit of sharing (garden and power tools, cars, cooking utensils), cohousing communities are much more than just tight neighborhoods; they often resemble extended families.

Sustainable Community begins with a colorful overview of the history of cohousing and catalogs Meltzer's observations of 12 cohousing communities in the United States, Canada, New Zealand, and Japan. Meltzer identifies six defining characteristics of cohousing models: participatory process, neighborhood design, common facilities, self-management, absence of hierarchy, and separate incomes. He also highlights the strengths of each community as well as the lessons learned as each has grown and developed.

Meltzer emphasizes a few common threads running through the 12 case studies that distinguish cohousing models from individual family-based housing communities: greater social cohesion and support, stronger inclination to treat neighbors like family, and more environmentally sustainable lifestyles (because of their smaller household units, shared gray-water systems, organic community and individual gardens, renewable energy use, reduced vehicular usage per person, and overall minimization of material goods per household).

This catalog of case studies makes up most of the book, and the plethora of observations can be overwhelming in its technical detail and abundance of information. Meltzer could illustrate the fundamentals of cohousing communities in perhaps half the number of case studies. However, each case study does include a strongly poignant moment in the community's history or an inspiring aspect of its daily living expectations. For example, the way the Berkeley cohousing community rallied around David Dobkin during his wife Donna's long struggle with cancer and the effects of a stroke was an amazing gesture of collective altruism. How likely is it that a neighborhood in suburban America would have set up a 24-hour schedule to accommodate Donna's medical care for months at a time?

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Meltzer is undoubtedly the leading authority in cohousing as a concept and Sustainable Community reflects Meltzer's expertise, with its technical detail, use of diagrams, and abundance of comparison. Meltzer's analysis in the second half of the book also begins to pique readers' interest beyond architectural design because of the insights he provides into the benefits and drawbacks of cohousing. However, his commentary about where cohousing fits into the bigger scheme of globalizing consumer lifestyles, rapid population growth, environmental degradation, and rising global inequality is too brief and leaves the reader seeking more information beyond the technicalities. If cohousing creates such sublime living conditions, why isn't it more popular? Is cohousing spreading or declining around the world? Why don't more people "get it" and create cohousing models so that they can be happier too?

While not fully answering these questions, Meltzer may leave readers wondering whether they'd be happier trading in their suburban McMansions for a little home in a cohousing community. Perhaps if they survived the withdrawal from TV and got to know their neighbors over a few shared meals each month, they actually would be happier.

Lindsay Hower Jordan is Marketing and Communications Coordinator for Rare, an international conservation organization located in Arlington, Virginia. This review reflects her own opinions.