The View From #410

Amazon.com customer review: (5 Stars) This is a book that I didn't want to finish! It is the real story of what happens in cohousing through the first person account of a deeply involved participant from the earliest planning stages through the building, move in and several years of settling in. This is a detailed look at Cambridge Cohousing, a Massachusetts urban intergenerational community of 41 households. As a member of a `Forming" group in Westport, MA., I found my self nodding YES constantly as I moved with the author through the engaging, exhausting and sometime frustrating and more often thrilling process of their complex journey. The book gave me an inside view - it made me feel as if I were there. The book gave me hope, that `we' might do it...and why it takes so much time. I understood more about my intuitive desire NOT to live in `senior's only community and what was so positive about families and people of all ages living in an interdependent community. I have been a student of Cohousing for about 2 years; eager to learn about this remarkable process of building community through books, articles, visits to established communities and meetings. The View from #410 is the first publication that illuminates the intense process of what it really takes to create a Cohousing community. This is a book for someone who already knows a little about cohousing and wants to understand the intricate dynamics and daily experiences of creating the shared living concept that is Cohousing. Other books that I've read were very useful in describing the history and the generic processes of creating cohousing, with brief examples, of the variations in urban and rural cohousing in the US and Denmark. Once you know the basics of cohousing, you'll be ready to dive into The View from #410.