Creating Privacy in the Midst of Community
"... the desire to spread out is understandable. The greatest fear of many people choosing community is that they won't have enough privacy. However, Danish cohousing residents, who've been living in densely clustered townhouse-style housing units since the late 1960s, and cohousing architects Kathryn McCamant and Charles Durrett know very well that not having enough privacy is rarely a complaint of people living in this kind of community housing. 'People find that once they close their door, their unit is as private as any private housing,' says Kathryn McCamant.
" 'It's much easier to get solitude in the midst of community than to get community in the midst of solitude,' observes Winslow Cohousing member Tom Moench."
Words to challenge automatic assumptions, from Creating a Life Together, by Diana Leafe Christian. Unexamined assumptions lead us to make decisions at the outset, that will affect our lives and the life of the community for years to come. While many of the motivations that drive us on are the fruit of deep and lasting desires and needs, other drivers can be quite transitory and superficial. Does a yearning for wide open space equate to a large lot size per unit? Or is it a reaction to something in our current situation, either physical or psychological, that will automatically be resolved by any new collective environment?