What if we lived together, separately?
 | By Max Strasser Assistant Editor, Opinion |
Do you ever wish you had more people in your life? More friends who were accessible without all the planning and the scheduling? More people of different ages — children, older people, younger people — instead of just your own cohort? More folks who could lend a hand when you need someone to walk your dog or, perhaps especially, look after your kids? |
I've definitely felt that way (though I have neither kids nor a dog). My urban life, far from my family, is busy and stimulating and fun, but sometimes I can't shake the feeling that it's also atomizing. During those moments I might fantasize about life in an intentional community — a commune, maybe, where I and a hundred other people share our homes and our meals. And then I remember how I like my personal space. No, thanks. |
Judith Shulevitz thinks she's found it. In an essay for this week's Sunday Review, she writes about cohousing, a movement in which people, as she puts it, "live together, separately." Cohousing communities are short of full communes, but far more communal than most of our lives. |
The people who may benefit the most from cohousing aren't people like me. They are parents — mothers, in particular. The pandemic has made clear how few systems of support many parents have. (Remember this project that my colleagues put together about working mothers?) |
Communal living isn't going to solve the problem of parents' lack of support; it probably can't be scaled up enough to solve the problem of atomization, either. But it may be instructive on how to build a more supportive society. Shulevitz's essay doesn't just make the case for cohousing, it suggests how we could seize this moment to learn its lessons and think about how we could build our cities and our towns — and our lives — differently, together. |
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