The Return of the Village

Massachusetts Audubon Society, March/April 1994 

Cohousing offers a chance to counteract the infamous isolation of suburbia.

Members plan to share resources as much as possible—meal preparation, child care, carpooling, and household tools. "We all won't have to go out and buy mowers," said Steve Hecht, a chiropractor with an office in Brookline.

There will be a common house, with common dinners, music, theater, and community get- togethers. "I'm looking forward to this," said Hecht's wife, Dori Smith, a technical editor for Digital, "all the activities right here without having to drive all over the place." 

The group is trying to be as inclusive as possible—young children, senior citizens, several single mothers, and four single women over age fifty-five. There will be a great sense of extended family. "I think the multigenerational part of this is important," said Smith. The idea is to create a diverse community.

"What we're intending to do is build a neighborhood for ourselves; we're looking for real social security," said Hecht, "not just a check from the government. Besides, I never wanted to move out to suburbia." 

When goals began forming for the first cohousing development in the Boston area several years ago, ecologically sound practices and natural beauty were two of the six points labeled "absolutely essential" by members of the planning group.

Sustainability has been a priority in cohousing since this new form of community developed in Denmark twenty years ago. Now the concept has taken hold in sites throughout Europe and much of North America. About 150 cohousing groups exist across the United States, and at least five Massachusetts cohousing projects are in various stages of development, including a Pioneer Valley group, which broke ground last fall at a site in North Amherst. The Boston-area group, known as the New View Neighborhood Development, will begin building in Acton this summer if no hitches develop in the permitting process. "So far we've had nothing but cooperation from the Acton government," said New View member Hecht, who has been heavily involved in the planning process.

Cohousing is a community commonly containing a cluster of one to three dozen private homes, a large area of open green space, and a common house with shared facilities. The common house has a kitchen and dining area for shared meals and generally also features a variety of meeting and activity rooms for both adults and children in the community. The concept combines aspects of the commune, the condominium complex, and country village. Residents can join in group meals and activities as often as they want without sacrificing the privacy of their own homes. They plan and manage the community themselves and have control over its philosophy and future, but there is no prevailing religion or ideology.

"I really like the village feel of it," said Yvonne Bauer, a mother of two who lives in Reading and was one of the founding group members. Bauer said she began exploring cohousing in the late 1980's "to have more of a sense of community in my life, a place where I fit in, a place where I feel comfortable with my neighbor." 

Key concepts for the Acton cohousing group mirror those in other groups—a less burdensome lifestyle, affordability, diversity of people, and conservation of natural resources. 

Members must participate in the consensus decision-making process. During the planning phase, members have been attending frequent meetings of ten different committees. "Each household has to be represented on a committee," Hecht explained. 

The group has bylaws and will encourage all members to be community-minded, but rules will be kept to a minimum, according to Hecht and Smith.

The idea of sustainability has been included in every aspect of the development—public transportation access (residents can carpool or walk to the commuter rail), energy-crafted homes, which use about half the energy of standard new housing, composting toilets in some units, and solar-assisted energy production in the common house. "It's an alternative to a way of life that's very consuming of resources," said Dori Smith, a member of its design committee. "We're hoping that the common house will be a model in terms of energy efficiency." Hecht added.

Recycling, low-toxicity building materials, "healthy-home" design, multipurpose landscaping, and a plan for water conservation are all incorporated into the plans as well.

The Northeast CoHousing Quarterly, a nonprofit newsletter based in Amherst, devoted its entire winter 1992 issue to the topic of sustainability and provided numerous resources for cohousing groups like New View.

The New View development ultimately will consist of twenty-five to twenty-nine homes and a 6,700-square-foot common building. Vehicle access is limited to a single drive to scattered pocket parking lots. The houses are connected by a footpath and a pedestrian lane, and there are plans for community gardens, play areas, and preserved meadows. The site lies on about twenty-two acres of land off Central Street in Acton, bounded on the west by conservation land and on the southeast by a stream. A nearby farm and year-round market known as Idylwilde and store in South Acton will satisfy many of the community's buying needs.

Because it preserves open space throughout the site, the development fits into Acton's Planned Conservation Residential Community zoning. The cohousing group owns part of the site already and had a purchase and sale agreement on the rest at press time. The group planned to close on the property when it received a building permit, according to Hecht, who like his wife has dedicated much of the past four years to the project.

The Acton group had a stroke of luck in that the town planner, Roland Bartl, hails from a small village in Germany, which allowed him to see the rationale behind cohousing. "He understood the idea immediately," said Hecht. Smith said that Bartl has helped the planning group with some of the difficult technical aspects of the development, of which there are many from soil percolation for the septic system to converting the existing $500,000 house on the property into four units.

"It's been such a roller-coaster ride." said Bauer. Allowing ten months to a year for building once construction and septic system permits are granted, the whole cohousing development process will have taken nearly six years by the time it is completed in Acton. The process can vary quite a bit in other parts of the country, depending on environmental conditions, finances, local acceptance of the cohousing concept, and other factors.

Hecht and Smith said that the group's architectural firm, Amacher Quinn, with Peter Quinn, project architect, and their landscape architect, Elena Saporta, both located in Cambridge, have been "outstanding in their work with the New View project and fully support the cohousing group's goal of sustainability." 

The New View plan was hatched in 1989 when a group of five Boston-area households, including Bauer's, got together to discuss the cohousing concept. They had read about it in a 1988 book called Cohousing: A New Approach to Housing Ourselves. The book, which was largely responsible for popularizing cohousing in the United States, was authored by the California-based husband-and-wife design team Kathryn McCamant and Charles Durrett, who had studied the new communities springing up in Europe.

The New View group wrote a charter and then began inviting more people to join the prospective community in 1990. "We spent the next year basically researching what we wanted to be." said Hecht. Group members were looking for a good-sized piece of land no more than forty-five minutes from Boston, with access to green space, a good school system, and appropriate zoning. They settled on an Acton site in 1991 and worked with the developer for eight months, only to have the plans fall through when the developer's goal diverged from those of the group. The second, current site was chosen in 1992, and the project proceeded.

The past year has been devoted to designing the site, the homes, and the common house. The overall style of the buildings will be simple, rustic, and natural, according to Smith. To conserve space and energy, Hecht added, the houses will be smaller than typical American homes but larger than some of the European models, with from one to four bedrooms. House prices will probably range from around $120,000 for the one-bedrooms to $260,000 for the four-bedrooms.

Twenty-six households had already signed up by early December 1993 as New View members, drawn mostly by word of mouth and through advertising in local newspapers and food co-op publications. A network of cohousing umbrella groups with newsletters also exists throughout the country and helped put the word out. New View even has a sizable waiting list that helps fill vacancies when members drop out because of changing circumstances.

Massachusetts Audubon Society, Sanctuary Magazine, 208 South Great Road, Lincoln, MA 01773; Phone 617-259-9500, Fax 617-259-1040.

Back to Top