Miguel Angel Mendez Zapata

ARCH452 Architectural Design Studio

COHOUSING
1. What is a participatory design process and why is it important to cohousing?
Participatory design is the process of designing with all agents and actors involved
in a project. Owners, construction, architects and the most important part the
people. This is important to cohousing cause to make people love their houses,
they must take part of this process. Indeed, these actions aim to provide better and
greater solutions to community, so design can engage people and develop social
and identity processes in these communities.
2. What is the distinction between cohousing, condominiums, and apartments?
Cohousing has shared spaces for daily activities and displaces houses into
assembled units of living while condominiums share public places without sharing
common spaces like dining, kitchens or patios, and apartments are single housing
units repeated in buildings so they are the same. Condominiums can either have
exact the same houses or personal designs but usually these ones are not built by
the community.
Cohousing is the way people live in those communities but they own their private
houses and a portion of the common areas.
3. What are the six characteristics of cohousing?

• Participatory design
• Strong sense of community in physical design
• Extensive common facilities, common areas for daily use
• Complete resident management, meetings and democratic organization
• Non-hierarchical structure
• Separate income sources, paying fees and shared cost for condominium
arrangement.

4. Describe two important site design characteristics that facilitate community?

Divorcing parking from the living environment through pathways and creating open
space that encourages casual engagement. Affordable site where residents want to
live. Majority on town.

5. Identify at least three features that contribute to making Cohousing a healthy place.
Open spaces, green areas, visibility for children and vulnerable people. Sense of
belonging and sharing time and place with people same and cross-generational.
6. Describe an instance in your experience where you participated in a democratic
decision-making process?
I had the chance to work with the Urban Design office of Cuautlancingo
municipality in Puebla, Mexico. We were designing streets renewal and we had
meetings with inhabitants to know their needs to diagnosis their situation. We were
designing for 6 months proposals for land use and infrastructure development and
we reviewed proposals with people. They were resistant with some of the streets
adaptation so there has been a lot of discussion of the proposals and solution to
meet peoples need and government intentions. During this experience I had the
chance to vote, to give my opinion about the project and to suggest changes
considering peoples thoughts. This process is not as ideal as it is shown in the
books. We should have people available with time to meet and interested in the
topic, but we also must gather as much as population thoughts as we could cause
it is an all-people concern that affects all.

8. How does the average size of a cohousing residence compare with a conventional
single family detached residence? (% larger or smaller)
Common facilities have been growing during the recent years according to
experience. According to the US Census, the average size of new homes was 2,324 sq. ft.
The private cohousing unit is 1,250 sq. ft. which is smaller by 85% but considering all
common places it averages up to 4,000 sq. ft., bigger by 58%

9. What is the recommended number of households in cohousing? What are the

disadvantages of less or more?
From 15 to 34 households. Smaller groups tend to behave as unrelated people like
if they were living in apartments. On the other hand, author argues that lagers
communities can absorb varies of participation and differences of opinion.

10. Is social diversity a priority in the co-housing model?

Social diversity is part of the meaning of community. It is a concept implied by
cohousing. The text shows testimonials in which they have different generations
and schemes of families with different cultures, political tendencies and opinion but
they share the wish of living in community.

11. Write a question to author. _________________________________________ ?

Do cohousing considers places to be inserted where safety is not guaranteed such
as alarming crime places or robbery? How can cohousing be able to reverse this
urban decay issues?
How cohousing faces the lack of optimal condition sites in cities?
Are there any case studies of cohousing in other places than western countries?
How can cohousing be worked with people living scarcity and resistance to
democratic processes?