Reprinted from Communities Magazine Spring 2017 “I want to do something about climate change,” my 12-year-old daughter insisted. The immediacy of her feelings, and her earnest belief that she, personally, could do something momentous left me momentarily speechless. I remember that same urgency in myself as a teenager, before I realized the complexity of the... Read More

Once upon a time, the world was infinite. The edges of the map simply defined what was known, not all that was. Then it became common knowledge that the earth was round, and “the world” started to become something finite. When we were able to see the entire planet, from outer space, it really started... Read More

One emerging goal for cohousing is how cohousing can be used as a model for unique needs. There is often debate or confusion about communities that are “Cohousing-like”. ** Cohousing-like takes aspects of cohousing but is not cohousing. ** More-than-cohousing are cohousing-like communities with a social or economic mission.It is difficult to talk about “More... Read More

Nice Article with photos of Mosaic Commons & JP Cohousing! “The design process and the management process are things that actually mix the community together, so that you have to get to know each other in order to make these decisions.” — Architect Laura Fitch http://www.pbs.org/newshour/updates/balancing-privacy-community-design-c…

Laird Schaub and Terry O’Keefe and will be presenting “Community as Economic Engine” at the 2017 National Cohousing Conference in Nashville TN, May 19-21 . Please join us! Laird offered a version to a packed audience at the 2015 Cohousing Conference in Durham. Intentional communities sort broadly into two kinds: those where members share income... Read More

Gretchen’s Reflection: The benefits of intentional community can sometimes come as a surprise – especially when the community is still in formation, not yet even living together. When members of PDX Commons learned about the Women’s March on Washington and all of the sister marches around the globe, including one right here in Portland, there... Read More

As we near the end of 2016, we who are so lucky to live in community have much to be grateful for; most importantly: good, caring neighbors who are willing to actively engage in the process of creating great neighborhoods to grow up in, and to age in. As we ponder the state of the... Read More

Editor’s Note: Resilience is a theme of the 2017 National Cohousing Conference where Charles Durrett will be a featured presenter. In 2008, friend and author Bill Thomas asked me to critique the manuscript of his first novel, The Tribes of Eden. “Tribes” is the story of a near future collapse of the American government and... Read More

This Wired Magazine article recently published, Want to Survive Climate Change? You’ll Need a Good Community (authored by Eric Klineberg), underscores what we already know: that good neighbors and a resilient community can make all the difference in maintaining us through crisis. Remember the blistering heat of 1995 that killed hundreds of people in Chicago?... Read More