"If humanity does not opt for integrity we are through completely. It is absolutely touch and go. Each one of us could make the difference. "

R. Buckminster Fuller

On his blog entitled, Ruminations on mobility: infrastructure and attitude, Rob St. Amant compares a village he lived for five years in Germany with a small town in North Carolina that he lives near now and notes that in Garner, North Carolina, 

"If we were to zoom in, we'd notice a great deal more space devoted to parking lots and paved surfaces than in the Moosburg map.

This turns out to match the general desires and expectations of the American public. " 

I am not so sure that is a true statement of American desires anymore, or if it ever was true.  I think developers may interpret how to meet the desires of Americans this way, but that doesn't really mean people are happy with, or desire it.  When you go out to buy a home, if there is no other choice, you do the best with what is available.  

Friends of ours live in co-housing in downtown Oakland, CA that is mixed use and which has co-housing units similar to condos, market rental apartments, space for visitors to stay and childcare, in addition to commercial concerns on the street level. You can find out more about CoHousing at http://www.cohousing.org/.  You can see a slideshow collection of photographs of Swan's Market CoHousing neighborhood and community here.

Swan's Market CoHousing enjoys common meals three nights a week, an organic garden and frequent ad hoc activities together. It is within walking distance of BART, downtown Oakland, Chinatown, & Jack London Square.  Swans Marketplace is open and busy, providing an ongoing venue for the popular merchants relocated from the nearby Housewives Market; our new neighbors in the rental part of the project moved in. The project is also home to the Museum of Children's Art and some other arts uses, and features restaurants, shoe and games stores, and a grocery, along with some office space. And of course there's the weekly Farmer's Market out front every Friday.

Here's a video about a new CoHousing Community in Nanaimo, British Columbia that is currently under construction.  I think it shows a great deal about what goes into the formation of a CoHousing community. Their website is at www.pacificgardens.ca and includes plans for the units and the entire community that you can see.

 I lived in a commune in my twenties.  We shared ownership of a very large home and shared 4 or 5 vehicles; and my friends with whom I shared the house were between my age, 26-27, at the time, to pushing hard on 50 or so.  There were eight children. I lgained so many skills while living there, particularly parenting and organization.  The children all eventually graduated from college and graduate schools.  That life was thirty years ago.  There are those of us who have been looking for another way most of our lives.  Other communes that we knew at that time still exist, one not so far from you in Southern Virginia near Roanoke comes to mind. 

When we moved to our new home in Bellingham 4 years ago, we got rid of our two cars and bought one to share that met our needs in our new home.  We consolidate our errands, I work from a home office and if I commute, I do so by flying to San Francisco where I do most of my business a couple of times each year for ten days to two weeks.  During those trips I work intensively to meet with everyone I can and get the business's needs for personal contact met.  We have been putting less than 9,000 miles per year on one car since we moved here and a large part of that mileage comes of driving to Portland, Oregon to visit family and bring our grandson here for visits because he is too young to travel alone.

People do make different choices, but the kind of problems you are discussing here finds its roots in the cultural attitude that a home is merely a commodity as is a community.  That attitude expresses a cynicism that ignores the real activities of families and the families and households that make up a neighborhood, how neighborhoods work together in a larger community and how communities intersect in cities, and so on.  So long as commercial concerns are more highly respected in governmental decision making than the interest of the citizens needs for a community that serves them well, this sort of thing will happen.  Government has to come to respect that an investment in the infrastructure that brings people together in relation to one another is a central concern of the creation of a larger sense of responsibility and relationship from one to another from citizen up through the entire structure of society itself.

Bellingham, where I live has a tremendous network of trails and bicycle paths of which it can be very proud.  The downtown is being revitalized with mixed use buildings and renovations of existing buildings.  The downtown is home to festivals and a farmer's market that is a jewel in the crown of our city.  Until I was able to work from home using my skills and wit and a great cable internet connection, this wasn't possible for me or anyone.  I think a good many people could live as Dan and I do in our stand alone home a little outside of town without being any kind of onerous burden.  But each aspect of how we live is consciously chosen.  We recycle, Dan serves on our local homeowner's association, and when we can do it we are going to install an underground cistern to collect rain water to use in our garden.

In business I use email and only mail things like checks and use PDF's instead of paper whenever I can.  I hire people who are willing to use email to communicate.  Each of these is an example of a conscious choice and not just a consumer choice.  I know business likes to act like we are making consumer choices, as if consumers of goods are all we are, but most of us are really making choices about the kinds of lives we want to lead and we must choose consciously if we are ever to lead the kinds of lives that we will have any chance to love.

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Some of my thinking about this has been shaped by my marriage to an architect.  I've been 'in the room' when the professionals were having these conversations.  I've been at land use hearings, worked on legal cases where folks reaped the rewards for looking the other way when they had the opportunity to stand up and speak out.  I've also been quite influenced by the books written by architect and author Sarah Susanka.  While her ideas have to do with the design of homes, I think that many of her concepts can be applied to design problems for buildings of all kinds and urban design as well.

"The Not So Big House books by Sarah Susanka, bring to light a new way of thinking about what makes a place feel like home—characteristics that many people desire of their homes and their lives, but haven't known how to verbalize."

I think we want our communities to feel like home just as deeply.  Here's part of a message from her website that links to some interesting thinking:

"The inspiration for The Not So Big House came from a growing awareness that new houses were getting bigger and bigger but with little redeeming design merit. The problem is that comfort has almost nothing to do with how big a space is. It is attained, rather, by tailoring our houses to fit the way we really live, and to the scale and proportions of our human form. Two must-read articles about this topic include Cultural Creatives: The Rise of Integral Culture, by Dr. Paul Ray and a recent interview with William McDonough in Newsweek magazine entitled Designing The Future.

Judging by the success of my books, the message resonates with the concerns of a lot of people. Please feel free to download Chapter 1 of The Not So Big House (1.4 MB PDF) or Chapter 1 of Creating The Not So Big House (4.1 MB PDF)."

This kitchen from one of Susanka's designs has some qualities that mine has, probably because both involved architects who appreciate simplicity and natural wood.  Thoughtful design, suited to the occupants of a space is of so much more value than things that are designed to impress or seduce buyers with mere size.