Sustainable Community: Learning from the Cohousing Model

Abstract

Graham Meltzer, 2005, ISBN 1-4120-4994-6 In his foreword to the text, Ian Lowe, Emeritus Professor of Science, Technology and Society at Griffith University, asserts that ‘Graham Meltzer has done us all a distinct service by researching, writing and publishing this book [v]’. This reviewer disagrees: the text promises much, much more than it delivers or could have delivered. The difficulty starts with the aim of the book. The author opens by asking why ‘… intelligent, informed, well-meaning people have such difficulty “walking their environmentalist talk [1]”’. This question supplies the goal of the book: ‘The principle [sic] intent of this book is to provide answers to this question and to suggest how things might be different [1]’. And he goes further: ‘… this book reveals further causes [of the disconnection between environmental awareness and consumerist behaviour]. It shows how the quality of our social relationships and our “sense of community” are major determinants of our capacity for pro-environmental behavioural change. Thereby, it establishes a link between “community” and “sustainability”. The argument is eventually broadened to encompass issues such as urban form, mass housing and ecologically sustainable development [1]’. One may well wonder why a book that attempts to deal with these issues has Co-housing on its cover.