Serving Ourselves, While Serving Others
A few years ago, the Sustainable Neighborhoods Focus Group came up with the idea of giving as a key to a more abundant lifestyle. Currently, infill and new development often give very little to neighborhoods, usually a loss of views and open space, more traffic, and a deadness associated with second homes and single use neighborhoods.
From our Focus Group, a vision emerged where the residents of existing neighborhoods get more; More abundance and aliveness, more safety with neighbors walking on the streets to more conveniently located services. Along with a healthier, more pedestrian friendly lifestyle comes innovative ways to share more amenities, creating a greater sense of community and providing a more affordable lifestyle, a lifestyle beyond suburbia, a lifestyle that lives lighter on the planet.
A Neighborhood that Serves Itself, while Serving Others!
The Focus Group identified conceptual “clusters” of homes or workspaces, designed around residents’ simple but fundamental essential common needs; (in other words, the “cluster” could be a scattered site)
- Child-Oriented Houses
- a Cohousing Group
- an Elder Housing Group
- a Live/work and Commercial Space Cluster
- a Small Houses and Eco-Homes Compound
- Artist Cooperative Workshops
- Young People Living Over Garages….
Giving More Amenities, Getting More Life
These different clusters were assigned services to be provided, not only to meet the cluster’s own needs, but as economies of sale require, to meet the needs of the adjoining clusters and the existing, surrounding neighborhoods…. READ MORE >>
