Ecovillage at Ithaca

A glance at a detailed map of U.S. cohousing communities would show that most of us are living in areas of relatively high property values: on the coasts, in college towns or on the outskirts of high-tech growth centers. That’s one reason why making cohousing affordable to the widest possible number of people has been of intense interest to prospective community members throughout the history of the cohousing movement.

This is a historic moment on Planet Earth. Life as we know it is about to change dramatically as global climate change accelerates, and as we reach “Peak Oil,” when demand outstrips supply for fossil fuels that are increasingly hard to extract. As we look toward a future in which our traditional energy sources are severely depleted, cohousing neighborhoods have an increasingly important role to play in modeling a greener lifestyle.