Cultural Creatives in Cohousing

"You are literally creating a new culture," sociologist and market researcher Paul H. Ray, Ph.D., declared in his keynote speech to the attentive crowd gathered in Boulder, Colo., for the Cohousing Association of the United States' biennial National Cohousing Conference in 2003.

"Cohousers are helping shape a new American culture for the 21st century,"said Ray, co-author of The Cultural Creatives: How 50 Million People Are Changing the World. "Cultural creatives" is Ray's term for 26 percent of the American population - 50 million in all - who insist on authenticity in their personal lives and work, and are driving the demand for ecologically sustainable products and services.

Cohousers "definitely fall into the category" of cultural creatives, who are in a process of reframing what is meaningful to them, Ray said. They care about personal fulfillment, are socially conscious and want to create a better way of life - not just for themselves but for everyone.

"There is a huge market for cohousing," Ray added, noting that one-seventh of the American population - 10 million households - move every year, with most of them buying new homes. A former urban planning professor, Ray also noted that half of the new homebuyers in the U.S. are fed up with suburbs and love the idea of small-town design. He sees urban cohousing communities as a component of sustainable cities in the near future.

"The cities that will work will be those that are comprised of many little high-density functioning neighborhoods - many of them cohousing communities - modular units within the city," Ray said. "Cohousing communities will become a basic unit of urban design."

Text exerpted from cohousing.org