Tag: Sustainability


NextGen Cohousing Advocate

Cohousing offers families and individuals a greater quality of life through collaboration. It shows that we can live better in community, and that is important in a culture that has gone too far in propping up a myth of invulnerability through individualism. For those who can afford a home in privately developed communities, cohousing is... Read More

The Edge of Intentional

In the spectrum of intentional community, cohousing hangs out on the mainstream edge. We have our own homes. We don’t share income. Most of us have traditional mortgages as a way of accumulating wealth.  Compared with the most interdependent communities out there, most cohousing looks fairly conventional, but I wonder if we are inching along... Read More

Addressing Climate Change: Two Generations at Heart-Culture Farm Community

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

Social Permaculture: Applying the Principles

Social Permaculture, Public vs Private is the theme of the winter issue of Communities Magazine, exploring among other issues how “relationships with one another are just as sustainable, regenerative, and resilient as the ecological elements in a land-based permaculture system.” Click here for this article profiling how permaculture’s principles apply to human groups. And come...

Environmental Council Endorses Fair Oaks EcoHousing

Cohousers don’t only talk the green talk, they walk the green walk. Yet the sustainable lifestyle inherent in intentional neighborhoods is not always outwardly apparent to the greater community (minus solar panels on rooftops or street-facing gardens). It’s a goal of many forming communities to demonstrate these built-in savings, embodied in greener-built homes, on-site activities... Read More

Retire in the Sun For Less Money and Still Enjoy CoHousing

So you are thinking about retirement. Or may already be retired. You know that in this next phase of your life you would like to have a new adventure– new experiences, new culture, new environment, new lifestyle, new climate and maybe a new language. But not so different that you are no longer connected to... Read More

Yarrow Ecovillage: Cohousing as a Building Block to the Ecovillage

Published in Communities Magazine #171: Ecovillages Around the World Following the first cohousing community in the United States, Muir Commons in Davis, California, cohousing has not only continued to expand throughout the US and Canada, it has also become a model for other housing types (seniors housing, nonprofit affordable housing), and a building block for... Read More

Discover Cohousing: Sustainable Community Living – Event April 21 (Richmond VA)

Working Together Builds Community! An exciting cohousing event is happening in Richmond, VA – Richmond Cohousing and The Branch Museum of Architecture and Design are hosting a roundtable discussion on the concept and design principles of cohousing and their role in reshaping modern domestic spaces. “Discover Cohousing: Sustainable Community Living” will be a great opportunity...

Fitting Historic Houses into Bristol Village Cohousing

Vermont is a state of small towns, and among them, the village of Bristol is unique. It is the commercial hub of five rural townships, featuring an old-fashioned Main Street lined with shops and restaurants. A turn-of-the-century Town Hall rises in the center of the village, one part municipal office, one part cultural center. Across... Read More

Is Cohousing “Green Enough”?

Is Cohousing “Green Enough”? The Paris climate summit is now over. And I am wondering – has it (or other climate news) inspired any new or existing cohousers to stretch a little further in the green direction? We have heard about many new communities who are talking “passive house”, “net zero” and “net zero ready”.... Read More