First there was Thomas More's "Utopia," written in 1516. More envisioned a cooperative world in which groups of 30 families would share common facilities and meals and watch out for each other's children.
Some 450 years later, in Denmark in 1964, an architect named Jan Gudmand-Hoyer gathered a group of friends together to talk about More's ideas. He and his psychologist wife were growing tired of the big-city life. They were thinking about having a baby. They worried they'd feel too isolated if they moved to the suburbs. Together, Gumand-Hoyer and his friends built the first cohousing project in Denmark. Small individual homes clustered close together around a common outdoor space give rise to an old-fashioned feeling of community. In the midst of the homes is a large common house, with a laundry room, woodworking shop, kitchen and dining room. Shared dinners, prepared in the common house kitchen, make the neighbors feel like family.This is not a commune. People may share their tools, but they don't share their money. Residents leave every day and go to work at the same jobs they've always had. But when they come home, their whole neighborhood feels like home.
Today, there are more than 100 such projects in Denmark. About 15 cohousing communities are up and running in California, Washington, Colorado and Massachusetts.
Now, in 1994, cohousing discussions are beginning in Utah. Scott Cowley, a Salt Lake computer programmer, is a member of the Wasatch CoHousing Group. The group is hoping to acquaint large numbers of Utahns with the concept by holding a slide show and bringing two cohousing experts to town on Friday, Sept. 16. (See box.)
Cowley has been interested in alternative ways to live since the early 1970s, when he traveled the country visiting communes. He never found a place he wanted to live, but he learned a lot. "What I learned in the communes is that community can be an intentional thing. I learned there has to be public commitment and private space."
Next Cowley worked in Boston for 10 years. Coming back to Salt Lake City, he says, he has lived on the Wasatch Front long enough to see real estate double and triple in value, to see green spaces disappear, and to think there has to be a better way to live.
Members of Cowley's group have met with city and county officials and planners. Most everyone seems willing to see cohousing get a try.
A few of the cohousing projects in other states and in other countries have been partially built by public funds. In the majority of cases the people who want to live there do all the planning and financing themselves. However it happens, Cowley says, "I see this as a gift to the city, the gift of an alternative choice for housing."
He envisions communities of couples, couples with children, single parents, single people, retirees, widowers and widows. "This is the way to solve many of our needs for support," says Cowley. People can be alone anytime they want to, in their own home with their own kitchen. But they never have to be lonely because something and someone is always cooking at the common house.
And there are practical reasons why cohousing works well, Cowley adds. Take the time-consuming chores of home maintenance and cooking:
When 10 families share a lawnmower, they can afford to buy the best. You've got 10 adults taking turns being responsible for the maintenance of one well-made machine, rather than 10 adults being solely responsible for the maintenance of 10 cheap machines.
"If you are living with 40 other adults, you are only going to have to cook dinner once a month. People are free to come and eat or not. It's always there. This way, your kids never go hungry waiting for you to come home from work.
"Cohousing is only going to fly based on the fact that it can meet the real needs of modern people."
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Additional Information
Cohousing meeting
Cohousing's potential in Salt Lake City will be the subject of a slide show and discussion at 7 p.m. Friday, Sept. 16, in the Central City Multipurpose Center, 615 S. 300 East. Speakers will be Kathyrn McCamant and Charles Durrett, who wrote the book "CoHousing: A Contemporary Approach to Housing Ourselves" (Ten Speed Press). For more information and to RSVP, call Scott Cowley at 262-3291.