Intentional Community

In response to this vision for creekside rowhouses, @Joseph wrote the thoughtful questions below. The Smart Growth Manual (see Bibliography) 5.3 Housing Diversity suggests "for many reasons, a health neighborhood includes a wide range of dwelling types... community social networks depend on a diversity of ages and incomes... affordable housing provides a healthier environment when it is distributed... life cycle housing allows residents to move up economically without moving out." @Gerri also pointed in this direction, with a reference to "intentional community."

The Federal Hill and Otterbien districts of inner Baltimore where neighborhoods where "merchants and bankers lived along the main street, artisans and clerks on the side streets, and servants and laborers along the alleys." (from the historic interpretive sign in the neighborhood)

Joseph wrote in FB:

"I like the vision, and can imagine wanting to live there. Three broad and interrelated questions come to mind.

1) Who would really end up living there?

I can imagine a number of types of folks who might be attracted. Off the top of my head:
...- grad students
- sensible and steady undergrads
- young parents with small children
- empty-nesters who are sizing down
- DINKs (double income no kids)

I would like to see it become a neighborhood with a broad range of income levels and lifestyles. Our town, like most, tends to reflect our socially segregated society, with distinct sorting of people by neighborhood. Students live in neighborhood A (rather run down), blue collar in neighborhood B, landed gentry in C.... We don't see a lot of mixing of rentals and owner-occupied; upper- middle- and lower-income; short-term and long-term; town and gown. Could this be a model for a more integrated community?

If that is the goal, there is one trait all residents must all have in common: a willingness and intention to live with a different notion of privacy and relations to one's neighbors than is prevalent in US and in the rural west in particular. How do we make this the defining characteristic of the neighborhood, rather than having it devolve into just another island of one soc-econ segment or another?

2) Ownership?

Owner-only excludes some people but attracts people willing to make a long-term investment (not only monetary but in the idea of living there). Rentals could make it turn into just another off-campus private dorm, but would open it to people of more limited means who nevertheless want to live in a different (and in my mind) better way in relation to their community.

3) Governance?

As I stated above, it will take a different way of relating to neighbors to make this vision work. How is that achieved and maintained? Carrots? Sticks? Covenants? Owner association? Organic growth without explicit ongoing governance?

Would thoughtful architecture, land design, and ownership structure be sufficient to induce this sort of community?"