Newsreel
by James Reel
I'm part of what's wrong with America.
For a long time there's been lots of talk about how we've lost our sense of community. We barricade ourselves in our single-family homes, ignore our neighbors and step into the street only to roll out the garbage bins twice a week. To socialize, we pick up the phone, or drive for miles to meet friends who live across town.
And so we don't watch out for each other, lend a hand, act before some part of the neighborhood starts to go to hell. We race down our 25-mile-per-hour streets, occasionally swerving to avoid the rare clump of kids throwing a ball around, and lock ourselves into our own little private paradises before the world has a chance to impinge on our sacred privacy.
Sounds reasonable to me, but a growing number of people want more from life, and want to give more to society. They're behind the cohousing movement. Whether you think of cohousing as middle-class communes, a return to traditional values or the first step toward Paolo Soleri's vision of "arcologies" and the tight-knit communities they entail, the movement is gaining momentum.
Margaret Regan inspects Tucson's first, attractive cohousing efforts in this week's feature. Read it on your front porch.
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