As Vance Packard said a long time ago in his book, NATION OF STRANGERS, we've lost the cohesion and mutual support we had as a society when people stayed put, sharing houses or living across the street from family and friends, or at least living in the same town.
As Packard pointed out, corporate ladder climbing began to pull families apart as early as the 1950's; IBM, for example, was satirized as standing for "I've Been Moved." Then urban planners, working in concert with departments of transportation, exacerbated the problem even for those who stayed in one place. Thanks to their vision of the future, in almost every city, and even in many medium-sized towns, the cohesion of neighborhoods has been decimated by crosstown expressways, on ramps and off ramps. The coup de grace was furnished by the developers of mega-shopping malls and clustered box stores that ripped the guts out of neighborhood businesses, and therefore the ease of pedestrian shopping and social interaction.
Terrible. Thanks to these "opportunities and improvements," we are isolated from our families and friends, geographically; and -- in terms of the car and housing bubbles we occupy -- isolated from our fellow man in general. Yet -- it is unrealistic to think that we can miraculously go back to simpler, more pedestrian friendly town plans, overnight, if at all in the foreseeable future. We simply do not have the money to raze the suburbs and build more civilized villages and towns in their place -- much less to provide temporary housing for surburbanites while that slow process takes place. That's not all bad; maybe even good. Because there is more energy in going forward than going back; in fact, most of us yearn, not for the past, but for a new version of the community connection some of us vaguely remember, and others intuitively desire.
The challenge -- because our entrepreneurial as well as our personal resources are so limited -- will be to utilize, for now, what we have in place, however imperfect it may be. For example:
a. McMansions. For now, can the sow's ear that is represented by the suburban McMansion be converted to a silk purse? Can these behemoth blights on the landscape (that are now often empty) be converted, at relatively low cost, to provide modest, but far more intrinsically civilized housing for extended families and/or groups of friends? The 3-6000 square footage alone says yes, as does the wasteful variation on a theme of room usage -- living room, great room, home office and FROG? (In the south at least, a FROG = a Family Room Over Garage.)
Although it sounds alarming, a bit Doctor Zhivago-ish, to people who have become accustomed to absolute privacy, such a house could be retrofitted fairly easily into two or three separate suites consisting of private sitting rooms, bedrooms and bathrooms, while allowing the ubiquitous and enormous kitchen/"great room" to be allocated for common use. This not only avoids the expense of unnecessarily duplicating kitchens, but also fosters togetherness.
(The lawyers and financial wizards among you will have to figure out how the parts of those shared houses can be financed, as well as how individual investments could be recovered if someone wants to leave without endangering the whole.)
b) School conversions. Regrettably, few of us have the resources in land or money for family compounds, on which the original house and dispersed separate cottages evolved as a civilized way for different generations to be together, but also maintain individual privacy. That's a sadness, as it is a model that is, in many ways, ideal. So, utilizing only our current housing stock, how can we offer everyone an Everyman's version of that graceful arrangement?
At the top of the list, we could convert many of the private boarding schools that are foundering and doomed to go out of business (for example, the one where I teach) -- not into miniscule sub parcels for the development of more McMansions, but rather, into viable shared communities, villages really, for 100-300 people. The physical plan works well for sharing, as the buildings are already divided between those that are intended for shared use (the old estate house that, on the first floor, offers a vast kitchen, dining room, drawing room and gallery, with attached flanking wings that house an infirmary and a chapel/meeting room); those that are intended for common industry (classrooms that could be converted to offices and studios for entrepeneurial ventures); and those that provide housing of one sort or another (low-rise dormitories and faculty housing that could be converted into more civilized living spaces).
And, like a good set of Gin-Su knives, these schools offer a bonus; they come equipped with vans for shared transportation (to the train station, for example), all forms of maintenance equipment (and also the barns in which to store them). They provide ready-made shared playing fields, walking paths through the woods, and lovely open space on which communal gardens could be planted, among other things.
c) Cluster housing. What about reconsidering and redefining the cluster housing model? We could simply redefine its target demographic, rejecting the age designation (and subsequent age segregation) of these communities that has effectively resulted in full occupancy, but lifeless warehousing of aging retirees. The cluster model works well when people of all ages use it -- as TheraP suggested, there is a natural match, for example, between retirees and working parents in need of good daycare, etc.. In fact, cluster housing works well for anyone of any age trying to cut down on both space and expenses, and would work even better if a central cluster were devoted to a community kitchen/dining room/library, etc.
c) Hotels. In 2001, in Miami, urban chic friends of mine (some of whom had children) -- people who were no longer interested in the expense and maintenance involved in owning private houses with gardens -- seriously discussed joining forces to buy a small Deco hotel on the beach (boasting a roof terrace with an ocean view and a beautiful pool in the garden) when it went up for sale; their plan to combine rooms into light-drenched, spacious apartments, while converting the restaurant into a shared private dining room really worked, as did their willingness to share a common garden and pool.
d) Assisted Living/Nursing homes and Singles' complexes. Even these ghastly bastions of polarized age segregation have something to teach us, and they should be studied as models for housing groups of people in community. One doesn't have to be near death or, conversely, swinging from chandeliers to live alone; nor does one have to be single to believe in taking up less space.
Upscale assisted living/nursing homes are, for example, better than singles' complexes in terms of providing sensible kitchen facilities. Their developers recognize, as a singles' complex does not, that no one who is old and tired, or (in the case of singles) working full-time is cooking three squares on a regular basis. Therefore, although they provide kitchenettes in individuals one or two bedroom units, they also provide and emphasize a common commercial kitchen and spacious dining room that promotes camaraderie.
However, in America, retrofitting existing nursing homes that are going out of business is probably not on, as they are invariably built on cheap plots of land next to a highway, and the depression factor of that is huge. Many newer singles' complexes are similarly located and are therefore to be avoided. But some AL/N homes, and some Singles complexes, are integrated relatively well into neighborhoods and could be adaptively re-used. I saw a genuinely attractive nursing home in Nova Scotia, in which units were constructed as staggered one-story cottages, each one having access to a broad sun deck that overlooked a common garden in which residents were encouraged to plant flowers and vegetables for personal and shared use.
Asleep yet? If not, your thoughts?
