Describes the development of one of the first cohousing
communities in the U.S. offering a social understanding of its
commons.
Cohousing, a form of communal living that clusters around shared
common space, began about a half century ago in Denmark. We Built
a Village describes the process of planning and building of an
early cohousing community in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and the way
the people involved simultaneously built their homes and their social
structure.
As both a memoir and a sociological analysis that probes the
differences between commons and markets, it is unique among books
about cohousing. When this group of people began in the late 1990s to
construct their cohousing community, they set in motion a
counterpoint between the physical spaces and the social
configurations that would guide their lives together, even up to
creative responses to the recent pandemic.
