Cohousing: a Low-Carbon Lifestyle
New Study Says Shared Communities are Next Big Thing in Green Living
A New Report Says Americans and Land Developers are Buying in to the Idea of Sharing Space. Cohousing Lets Homeowners Go Green While Getting to Know the Neighbors
A report in Futures Journal, says that a new kind of housing development is on the rise in the United States. It’s called cohousing, and, according to the study, it’s a hot new way to live a “low carbon lifestyle.”
In the United States, cohousing is not quite as communal as it may sound. It is usually an effort by concerned individuals to create shared spaces in their communities while retaining the privacy of owning their own single-family homes or condominiums.
While homeowners get their own four walls to live in, when a “cohouser” steps out his or her door, they are surrounded by communal space. Community kitchens, shared gyms, laundry facilities, playgrounds, cafes and even communal garden plots are designed into the neighborhood.
History of Cohousing
Cohousing was originally a Danish idea, but the idea made its way to the U.S. in 1988 in the form of a book, called Cohousing: A Contemporary Approach to Housing Ourselves. In America, the idea has been seen by many as a backlash to the isolationism prevalent in modern subdivisions and a way to bring everyday amenities closer to home.
However, according to the paper in Futures Journal, cohousing has been slow to take off in America because the movement is often funded and planned almost exclusively by individual citizens. Now, however, the study says more and more developers are looking to either collaborate with interested homeowners or even speculatively build cohousing communities.
The Cohousing Association of the United States says homes in cohousing communities tend to bring in sales at or above the national average, a statistic that may be driving developer involvement.
Smaller Carbon Footprints
Besides fostering relationships among neighbors and providing homeowners with amenities they might not have living on their own private land, cohousing can also be a good solution to a large carbon footprint. Neighbors develop car-sharing programs, pitch in on community-wide recycling efforts and simply take up less space than their sprawling suburban counterparts.
What’s more, cohousing communities are often built with newer, energy efficient materials and people tend to spend more time outside their home interacting with neighbors. As a result, they use over 50% less energy than traditional homeowners.
As Dr. Jo Williams of University College London’s Bartlett School of Planning tells Futures Journal, ““with concerns about carbon emissions and energy savings, there has never been greater impetus for housing that offers low-carbon lifestyles.”
Future Growth
According to Dr. Williams, cohousing is especially growing in states like California, Massachusetts and Colorado. She says participation in such “partnership projects” has nearly quadrupled in the last decade. Also, the number of communities choosing to “retrofit,” or tear down existing barriers like fences in order to establish community space, has tripled.
Although cohousing was developed primarily as a way of getting back to a good old fashioned neighborhood, it now also seems like a hip new way to live the green lifestyle. Even the EPA is on board, often featuring cohousing projects as perfect case studies in its “Smart Growth” program, an effort to promote mixed-use, environmentally friendly urban planning.
All in all, cohousing seems like a rising trend, offering low-carbon, user-friendly and community involved lifestyles. With apologies to Robert Frost, maybe no fences make the best neighbors.
