Advice and Support
Advice
If you want to develop community, a housing cooperative, eco-village, pocket neighbourhood, or cohousing project, come and visit. We are in central Christchurch, New Zealand.
We will provide you with a personalised advice session about how to design your housing initiative to develop community.
Advice includes
- Appropriate legal structures
- Design guidelines
- Living next to each other guidelines
- We will sketch you a site plan
UK Cohousing Network Graphic
Design Guidelines
Follow these guidelines to design neighbourhoods for people and develop a sense of community.
- Cluster households
- Put cars on the side
- Graduate private to public spaces
- Extensive common facilities
- Intentional resident participation
Support
Groups who are actively forming a new cooperative, cohousing, tiny house village, ecovillage or community are welcome to use our meeting room at no cost. Events must be non-profit.
They can also book the cafe space for day planning events, if it’s available.
Experience Community
If you wish to set up a community and experience how it works, you’re welcome to stay in our guest room for a few days, if it’s available.
Recommended Resources
Creating Cohousing
A great guide for designing your new neighbourhood for people. Architects Charles and Kathryn both live in purpose-designed neighbourhoods, have visited hundreds, and developed over 50. We chose Charles to provide us with a concept plan for our rebuild.
Pocket Neighborhoods
This design guide targets smaller-scaled developments of 8 to 15 dwellings. Easy to read design principles.
Utopianz
A guide to Intentional Communities in New Zealand. It shows the diverse attempts to build communities. We helped fund its publication to record New Zealand’s history.
Cohousing New Zealand
A website showing the different cohousing communities around New Zealand. Cohousing is the latest popular approach to designing for community. The website features Auckland’s Earthsong, and Dunedin’s High Street cohousing neighbourhoods.