Tweet Today’s post is by contributing writer Nichole Reber: “What would it look like if we lived in a community-oriented neighborhood?” Claudia Hartman asks. For her and Donna Niemann, real communities are places filled with different generations, socio-economic diversity, and sustainable daily living practices. They’re hoping to manifest this in an eco-hybrid model known as Vesta Communities. The duo took their search for best practices in design, affordability, sustainability and governance on a 2,500-mile journey across Arizona, Utah, Colorado, and New Mexico—and of course the cohousing communities in Tucson and Prescott. They studied 20 private developments such as cohousing, pocket…
Posts Tagged ‘cohousing’
Tweet About a year ago, I was asked to be a part of a cohousing effort here in Phoenix and everything that I learned about community-oriented design inspired me tremendously and has informed much of my thinking about neighborhoods and our city. Cohousing is a very specific model of community living that was originally created in Denmark. A cohousing community usually consists of around 12 to 36 units, is designed by a participatory process led by future residents, has extensive common facilities usually in the form of a common house and is ultimately managed by its residents. But there are…
Tweet This weekend I was in Milwaukee with my husband to visit his family. My brother-in-law had us over for tea and I helped him put up his Christmas tree. He lives in a one-bedroom apartment on the 3rd floor of an old mansion. That mansion, that was once built for a single wealthy family, was later converted into 4 apartments. My sister-in-law, who also lives in Milwaukee, recently bought a duplex that was also once an old mansion but was turned into a duplex later. Milwaukee is full of such buildings in its neighborhoods – single-family mansions turned into…