Paradise future? Part 2, operations
[Continued from yesterday's Part 1.]
Yesterday’s exploration of the interesting experiment of co-housing, based on a sympathetic Boston Globe account, had reached the point of a completed development, using as an anti-snob crowbar the powerful lever of Massachusetts’ Chapter 40B law to produce a development that the founders swear up down and sideways ‘will’ be green.
Future green? The Mosaic Commons site at Sawyer Hill
Will? Nothing about co-housing makes it inherently greener than any other form of higher-density living.
There are 74 communities in various stages of development, 25 in
“The web of life that we have created through driving is just eliminated in cohousing,” said an association spokeswoman, Neshama Abraham Paiss. “You’ve got a real village.”
Except you have to drive to your job, and to your groceries. All of this sounds merely like a plea for higher-density new urbanism, not a breakthrough innovation in its own right.
Emerson Chandler, a member of the Zoning Board of Appeals, said Sawyer Hill’s contention that it is environmentally sustainable is “baloney,” because the clustering has caused water to run onto a neighboring property.
In the long run, the greatest threat to residential property is water. It can rot building envelops, drain into standing pools that rot siding, submerge property and breed expensive mold, and weaken building foundations. Grade a site and you change the runoff, often to someone’s detriment.
But he cast the deciding vote in January 2007 to allow the project, avoiding a lengthy fight.
That Mr. Chandler voted yes reveals, despite his misgivings, another power of Chapter 40B that we saw in my two-part post: developers generally prevail on appeals, so local zoning boards sometimes hold their noses and acquiesce to something they dislike.
Vote yes and think of
Tony Valchius has lived for 35 years on his 23-acre
Mr. Valchius has visual evidence on his side. Against him are those who believe the future will be different:
Journeay said engineers representing three different parties – Sawyer Hill, the town, and Valchius – all have said the arrangement in place should work.
‘Should’ – not even a future-tense verb, a future-tense conditional verb.
We always did all our chores, didn’t we?
What if it doesn’t work? In a co-housing development, who’s responsible for making it work? Who will pay to fix it?
Cohousers also may face cultural challenges as they move in over the coming months.
Who, despite their desire for a walking community, drive to work.
“We have lots of people in the computer industry,” as well as a large number of Worcester Polytechnic Institute graduates, in Camelot, said Journeay, who is a business account manager at Tufts Health Plan. “We have an honest-to-God rocket scientist.”
Who drive.
I have nothing against those who drive to work. But if your search for a sylvan walkable community takes you so far from your work that you are unable to use public transportation, how green are you really being?
But the village’s residents say they are committed to contributing to the community, through politics, schools, or by just being good neighbors.
How angelic, contributing to the community
Being good neighbors is not limited to co-housing residents.
“One of the things we’re so excited about is that we were able to put so much of the land into conservation,” said Ginny Maki [involved with the property since 2003 – Ed.], referring to the 28.5 acres that Sawyer Hill has set aside as open space.
Sorry, Ms. Maki, no points for that. That the residents have set it aside does not mean it’s legally deeded into conservation. That land could be redeveloped later – and before the co-housing property arrived, it was undeveloped.
[Update – in the comments, see below, commenter ‘dbang’ adds something omitted from the Globe’s article: “The conversation land is, in fact, legally deeded into conservation in perpetuity. It can’t legally be redeveloped later. Before, that land was undeveloped because no one had developed it — now it is undeveloped by force of law.” That is a conservation benefit.]
Not that I oppose development.
Rather, I think you get little credit for using a zoning override to create higher density than the town allows, only to pat yourself for having left undeveloped what your permit required you to leave undeveloped.
Residents will build and maintain trails for public use.
More future-tense verbs. Building and maintaining trails is hard work.
Blogging’s even harder
When we’re young, we read and write science fiction, because the imagined worlds are more interesting than the experienced ones. When we’re old, we read and write history, because what has happened is both remarkable in itself, and real.
This month, Maki will be moving into her three-bedroom unit with her family. In addition to her husband and two young children, her mother will be there.
And her younger brother, Ethan Bickford, was able to buy a reduced-rate unit in the community because his income falls within the 40B guidelines.
I’m all for income-mixing. (You can see details of the affordable units, designed by Stockard & Engler & Brigham, here.)
Maki said her children are ecstatic about their future home and she loves that Sawyer Hill is multigenerational. After the death of her sister eight years ago, she said, she realized even more the importance of a tight-knit community and being close to loved ones.
“Once something like that has happened in your life,” she said, “it makes you take stock and remember what’s important.”
I wish them luck. Travel hopefully, but read the signs.
Comments
Comment from Daniel C. Hill, Esq.
Date: January 15, 2009, 12:00 pm
I represented one of the neighbors to this project during the ZBA permitting phase. Your essay is generally accurate and thought-provoking. However, your implication that the ZBA had to approve this project because it was a 40B is mistaken. At the time the ZBA voted, the Town of Berlin had the benefit of a “safe harbor” under 40B, and could have denied the project without repercussion from the developer or the state. It is not clear to me to this day why Mr. Chandler, and attorney himself, voted in favor despite his criticisms of the project during the public hearing.
Comment from Kai von Fintel
Date: January 15, 2009, 9:33 pm
Again, I’m a founding member of Mosaic Commons Cohousing, one of the two cohousing groups building on the Sawyer Hill land. I have a few more comments on this second part.
>I have nothing against those who drive to work. But if your search for a sylvan walkable community takes you so far from your work that you are unable to use public transportation, how green are you really being?
We’re being greener than other people who move to the suburbs and drive from their McMansion on a 2 acre lot, one person each to one SUV. Those of us with geeky jobs in Kendall Square will carpool, four or five in one car. Others work at home, or in Marlborough or in Hopkinton or somewhere else very close to Berlin.
>Sorry, Ms. Maki, no points for that. That the residents have set it aside does not mean it’s legally deeded into conservation. That land could be redeveloped later – and before the co-housing property arrived, it was undeveloped.
No, the land is in fact designated as permanent open space. This was part of the original agreement between us and the Berlin Selectmen and the Sudbury Valley Trust. The conservation restriction that is recorded on the land permanently prohibits any construction on the land and gives the residents of Berlin the right to use the land for recreational purposes. The forest is going to be managed by the Sudbury Valley Trust.
>I wish them luck.
Thank you. We need it. The current economic climate is not good for any kind of housing project.
Comment from admin
Date: January 22, 2009, 11:52 am
Dear Kai: Good luck — really! — with the cohousing
Saw your comments. As you or another commenter said, to each his or her own. My skepticism is experiential – such shared-responsibility shared-value communities that I’ve encountered tend over time to wander away from the utopian vision, mainly because people and households and values change (the same people age and their perspective changes) and things like tragedy of the commons and free-rider problems eventually prevail, like the worm in Eden. It’s good if it can work, but I’ve never seen it work longer than a decade.
Don’t get me started on dumb architectural maintenance like MIT‘s Stata Center (http://affordablehousinginstitute.org/blogs/us/2007/11/leaks-are-so-bourgeois.html) or Harvard’s Otto Hall (http://affordablehousinginstitute.org/blogs/us/2008/08/dreamers-versus-plumbers.html) and the Risk of Complicated Structures (http://affordablehousinginstitute.org/blogs/us/2008/09/the-risk-of-complicated-structures.html) …
Thanks for the notes; they add to the post!
David Smith 22 Jan 09
Comment from xssve
Date: February 13, 2009, 2:08 pm
Sweet blog – I did want to address your contention or the “green” costs of commuting, supply, etc., involved in rural living, this is essentially correct: however, I think you’ll find that this is already the situation re: rural gentrification, which currently mostly consists of scattered and isolated McMansion/mini estates.
By clustering rural residences into a more traditional village model, agglomeration economies are introduced with benefits including car pooling, for work., recreational or shopping expeditions, with potential net reductions in resource cost and externalities. Pretty much the same benefits you get with urban stacking, with pooling taking the place of public transportation.
Flashback Warning!
It also opens the door to leverage “new economy” technologies that have largely languished due to urban sprawl. e-commerce which has foundered in all but a few areas of lightweight, non-perishable commodities such as books and collectibles (and porn) becomes much more viable when economies of scale become possible i.e., bulk purchases, and by providing the critical element that was missing in the original e-commerce model: common distribution and warehousing nodes – i.e., a couple of refrigerator/freezers in the common house and you can hold perishable commodities until the purchasers arrive to divvy it up and take it home.
You could do this in any neighborhood, anybody with an empty garage and a couple of old refrigerators can set up as a distribution node, but it never happened, possibly due the phenomena of architectural/environmental urban isolation – maybe now it will.
It’s a valid observation, but it implies comparison – compared to what? Currently we already have a fairly inefficient commuter/consumer system, people constantly shuttling far and wide between one environmentally controlled space to another – individually – with virtually no economy of scale on any level.
At worst, co-housing would simply be more of the same, while on the flip side, I’d be very surprised if least some benefits of agglomeration did not evolve.
Comment from xssve
Date: February 13, 2009, 2:13 pm
Postscript: anyone interested in this might also check out Catherine Fitts at Solari for further suggestions on keeping it local in terms of financing if de-conglomeration is an issue for you.
Comment from dbang
Date: January 12, 2009, 3:35 pm
You’ve obviously made up your mind on this subject so I won’t argue points of opinion, but you did make a few errors of fact, including:
“That the residents have set it aside does not mean it’s legally deeded into conservation. That land could be redeveloped later – and before the co-housing property arrived, it was undeveloped.”
The conversation land is, in fact, legally deeded into conservation in perpetuity. It can’t legally be redeveloped later. Before, that land was undeveloped because no one had developed it — now it is undeveloped by force of law.