Articles by Issue Date

It is the eve of the 2008 Cohousing Conference. It has been 20 years since the concept of cohousing was introduced to an increasingly transient and anonymous American population. It therefore seems like a natural time to step back and survey the movement’s current state, as well as its trajectory – to measure our successes and to recognize the work that lies ahead.

These tools of use to groups tackling issues come from Seeds for Change, a British nonprofit that seeks to equip those working for change with better skills.

After the November 2007 Japanese Ecovillage Conference in Tokyo, I visited three “collective housing” projects in Tokyo with conference host Akemi Miyauchi. At that conference I first heard of what the Japanese call “collective housing” – high-density housing projects with various kinds of common space – but it sure sounded much like cohousing to me.

As cohousing increasingly becomes a global phenomenon, I've become curious to learn how different countries mold the concept to reflect their cultural, financial and regulatory realities. I learned that firsthand after I had a chance to see three cohousing projects in Japan recently.

After attending the Japanese Ecovillage Conference in Tokyo in late November 2007, I visited the 28-unit Kankanmori no Kaze Cohousing project in Tokyo with two friends, Giovanni Ciarlo from Huehuecoyotl Ecovillage in Mexico and Akemi Miyauchi, one of our wonderful conference hosts. Giovanni and I had given presentations about intentional communities at the conference, and we were eager to see similar projects in Japan. There appear to be relatively few intentional communities there, and so far perhaps only a total of four cohousing communities – depending on how one defines the term.

As a group, cohousers tend to be a creative, resourceful lot, and their marketing efforts reflect this. Friendly flyers hung in coffee shops, member-staffed booths at Farmers' Markets, slide shows at local bookstores, ads in the Sierra Club newsletter and preschool newsletters – along with the indispensable word-of-mouth promotion – can draw prospective members to a new cohousing community by the score.